


Between Wolves & Doves

by asnackdriver, Punk_in_Docs



Category: AU Star Wars - Fandom, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 19th Century, AU, Alternate Universe - Porn, Alternate Universe - Vampire, BUT ALSO BE PREPARED FOR A FUCKTONNE OF M/M/F VAMPIRE PORN, Blood, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M, Handfasting, Historic Porn with Plot, Historical Romance, Human/Vampire Relationship, Human/Vampire/Vampire, Mutual Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Regency Era, SLOWEST OF SLOW BURNS OK FOLKS, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Burn to the Porn, Slow Romance, Stalking, Vampire Bites, Vampire Family, Vampire Stalking Human, Vampire Turning, Vampires, Yes I just used Jane Austen in the same tag as Vampire Porn, balls and parties, courting, elopement, historic AU, what even is my life at this point-
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:47:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 41
Words: 448,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22496341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asnackdriver/pseuds/asnackdriver, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punk_in_Docs/pseuds/Punk_in_Docs
Summary: Vampire!Kylo x OC love story. Inspired by BBC’s Dracula. Also inspired by Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. NOW ON WATTPAD!He’s been stalking this earth long since civilisations can possibly fathom. Before records even began. He sneers at the fact that this pitiful young world has only just begun to see his reign of it.He’s dined with moguls, emperors, princes. He’s consorted with bloodthirsty ruthless Queens in their courts, and whispered into the ears of powerful King’s, whose names still echo through millennia.In his myriad of centuries gifted to his immortal self he’s been many many things. He’s been a lowly pauper. A crusading knight. An assassin. A sell sword. A soldier. A wanderer. A simpering suitor and a voracious unyielding lover.Aimlessly lost in time- besieging this earth. Ripping it apart and drinking what’s left.He was made in the hinterland between snow and dirt and pine trees. Crusted with ash and blood. Sired from the hell-mouth of war. He was made in 789 AD.He’ll come undone, one bitter winter night, in England, in 1816.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Original Female Character(s), Kylo Ren/Original Male Character(s), Kylo Ren/Reader
Comments: 331
Kudos: 1021





	1. Lifeblood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [terry012227](https://archiveofourown.org/users/terry012227/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we go ❣️❣️❣️ Ready to plunge headlong into this world? Let me know what you think of this teaser...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Life is blood; And blood is life.” - unknown

_~ Hampshire, England. 1816 ~_

Winters here were always of the bitterest kind.

Everything hardened by frost. All of nature slaughtered and gnarled and made ugly by it. Everything deadened and driven away until yellow spring sunshine butters it all up. The ground wintry solid and as unyielding as the bite of stinging chill in the air.

Every loud footstep from under her cracked boots crackled and crushed with ice-crusted mud. Her treads echo off about her in the oppressive silence of the air.

Iris Ashton walked along the lonely pale road. The path ahead scattered with linen-white snow, thick like cloth, settling down in ghostly sprinkles - like fluttering ash.

Snow comes from a sky as thick and as soft as a eiderdown. Graphite grey smeared all over the horizon signalling the worst yet to come. Sky is heavy and blotted with it. Flecks already kiss and cling at her hair and her blue wool coat collar.

She can feel them land and melt on her cold numbed lips. Feels her raspy silver breath run them away.

The trees in the dark wood surrounding her on either side of the ribboning track and the pallid ground; stand majestic and strong. Like a darkly Prussian-blue swathed army standing silent attention. Frost crawls determined up their sturdy trunks. The horizon peeping through the trees is white, like a puff of spilt flour. The craggy black tips of the regimented trees scrape at the thick churning sky.

One hand laden with her heavy wicker basket. Hanging solidly down by her thigh. Handle creaking so under her glove from it’s heavy contents. Her elbow is locked straight and aching fully from the strain of it.

Mother had sent her off on one of her errands; paying calls to give some wrapped linen food parcels to the church. Cold meats and half-loaves of day old bread to give to the poor and needy. And on the way back she’d stopped and called for tea with her doddery great Aunt Lavinia. A more belligerent old dragon never drew breath.

Iris was her favourite of all the Ashton girls. All three of them. Unfortunately the lot of being the eldest and families general paragon of hope, fell onto Iris. Next was her sister Flora who is fifteen, and then there was Posy, at sixteen.

A whole compliment - _a bouquet_ \- of Ashton ladies. As the gossip columns always so proudly and wittily declared.

Iris was the level-headed, sensible elder sister at three and twenty. The one who was seen and never heard. The one with unremarkable grey eyes and fair skin. Her teeth were supportable, and her conversation was, well, _fine_ , really.

She didn’t have dazzling honey blonde hair or a sultry head of brunette curls. Her hair was brown. Not chestnut. Not sizzling auburn blaze. Just. _Brown_. Like mud. Like bark. Like flat Turkish coffee.

_The sensible Ashton girl, with eyes as dull as dust, and hair the colour of twigs._

She was pale, with a oval face and a stout figure that was passably pleasing. She had a fine bosom that some men liked to gawp at, and mother insisted she had a touch of child bearing hips. Which would strongly come into her favour when she’s married. As she had once said;

“Your future husband will be much delighted with such a valuable commodity, Iris.” Her Mother remarked once when she was a young girl and she was tugging and yanking her long hair into a plait ready for bed.

Iris can remember how badly she wanted to do something out of spite purely to ruin that chance. But really she couldn’t alter the shape of her skeleton with much ease.

Maybe she wasn’t a diamond of the first water. She’ll never be one of those girls who glide elegantly through a ballroom like a bevy of silk swathed swans. Preening, poised and primly perfect.

To her own mind and credit she was just - _plain_. Tolerable.

Adequate.

She is sometimes remarked to be too acerbic with her tongue, or her remarks. She’s certainly got a backbone and another quality that stumped men of the ton - a mind of her own making. She doesn’t suffer fools and she likes to venture that she is a blue stocking with a decent and level understanding of this world.

She’s sufficient- she supposed. Simply that and nothing more. She’ll never have poems written about her, or have a man declare he fell wildly in passionate love with her with one glance.

It suits her well enough. The fact that she looked like a dusty dull unrefined ornament next to her polished preening sisters. She’d rather fade into the wallpaper than be a dazzling spectacle of ridiculousness, like that of her two siblings.

Her simpering, inane sisters. Who flirt with any man donning a scarlet coat in the Militia. Flora and Posy, who worry obsessively about ribbons, and seek to pay no mind to anything, of any real consequence.

Iris is never one for fits of jealousy, but she is sometimes envious of their light-hearted puerile, worries. About making up their bonnets or, the next ball, or the most unbecoming stain on their new pelisse.

Aunt Lavinia greatly despised the merest sight and intimation of the younger Ashton ladies too. Iris is usually requested to go to tea with her Great Aunt, alone.

“Silly chit of a girl. The pair of them.” Was her relative’s most favoured and overused phrase.

She’d cackle it as one of her clawed elderly hands - _talons_ \- gripped her teacup. And she wouldn’t be happy until she’d griped and moaned and complained about every beast and man put on this earth. For they’ve all been put there with the sole purpose of vexing her greatly -Naturally.

Tea today was no different to any other occasion she pays a visit.

Iris sits with the sniping old matron in her freezing-cold front parlour with a piffling fire barely going. Her Aunt is always bedecked in enough black muslin to cover all of Hampshire.

A black lace matron cap staunchly on her head. Black fichu covering at her shoulders. An inky shawl on her arms and on each of her skeletal fingers sit glimmering gleaming rings which _clackclackclack_ and scrape when she moves and points that every disapproving finger. Big fat stones of amber and ruby and topaz weighting down her frail claws.

Iris always teeters politely on the most uncomfortably hard settee opposite her. Cradling the hot spode bone-china cup of tea that her Aunt shoves in her hands. Sugar staining sickly saccharine on her lips - she never let her guests have unsugared tea.

Quite why she is the favourite Ashton, Iris has no clue. She is always interrogated by the woman as she barks nosy question after nosy question at her.

“ _Yes_ , Aunt. _No_ , Aunt. I don’t believe _so_ , Aunt.” As the harridan gripes about beef or sugar or candle taxes, or the local Reverend, or the gaudy new fabric on display in dressmakers window.

A whole ream of grudges being spewed out that wrinkled puckered mouth. Face pale, craggy and screwed up with lines like a sheet of crumpled parchment paper.

Her dark eyes shine forth like raisins sunk deep into scones. Glittering black and always always always dissatisfied with the whole world, and determined to find fault with everyone in it.

Iris brings her the ointment her Aunt asked for. She was suffering a hacking cough that worsened in the winter. Lavinia insists its a damp affliction brought on by unclean air.

Iris bought the woman a bottle of liniment rub, spiced with rosemary oil, camphor and spirit of wine. Her Aunt harrumphed at her offering. Stabs her walking cane into carpet in disfavour. Shoves the bottle away and insists Willow bark tea is what will cure her ailment.

Next she’ll be insisting on leeches and blood letting to balance out the humours-

Iris doesn’t fight her stubbornness - it’s a battlefield over which she will never win or hoist a flag of victory.

She drinks down three more cups of the cloying tea, interrupts the interrogation and insists rather bravely that she must be on her way - for Lord and Lady Hearst are throwing a ball this evening. On their vast estate. And she needs to scurry home to ready for it. That earns her another harrumph in response. Lavinia detested balls.   
  


“Breeding ground for senile men and stupid women. And all that inane _leaping_ about they now call dancing...” She grimaces.

The whole county is in uproar for this ball - little else to recommend or appreciate in this bleak dull midwinter. Whispers flourishing around town seemed inclined to favour that a mysterious Lord from the continent is in attendance tonight...

A Lord. From Bavaria no less. Apparently he owned a vast castle high up in the snowy forest smothered mountains.

Quite why he’s bothered to travel the length of Europe to this savage spit of society in the Hampshire countryside, she cannot fathom. If she was lucky enough to live in a castle, she’d never be seen again.

She recounts that scrap of gossip about the prospective Lord to her Aunt. Who thunks her cane loudly on the floor and scoffs in derision;

“Foreigners are always a grave source of disappointment - and they are so riddled with lice and ill bred manners.” So wisely declares Aunt Lavinia.

She says that about anything to do with anything and anyone not born or formed on good british soil.

She had said the very same thing last week about the pews at Church-

She leaves the little bustling hamlet. Shuts her Great Aunt’s warped cottage door. The wood shuddered, catching on the doorstep. Her arm shot through with needles of pain. Aches slipping up her back, her neck and sparking her shoulders. She hooks the heavy basket onto the crook of her elbow and sighs as she plods homeward.

Away from the small tudor, mouldy mustard walls of Lavinia’s cottage. A pretty little house. Always cold. Formed of thick stone walls and mahogany creaking stairs. Austere bare furniture sparsely filled every room. Wedged into a street with crossed glass windows and a petticoat brown tiled roof.

It was a meagre six miles from here to home. And she appreciates the walk. Or atleast she might be more inclined to favour it, were her coat more substantial.

As it is the blue wool thing is possibly a might too small for her now. It tugs and pinches so across the shoulders. And the hem ends right up her calves. Pebble-grey Kidskin gloves on her fingers, knuckles knotted stiff and her fingertips are tingling with cold.

The hem of her plain cotton voile dress, is dark with damp from the snow. The bluebell cobalt of it leeched darker at her hem. She’s shivering because her stockings aren’t the warmest wool. Her legs are trembling cold and she only wore her lightest chemise. However she is glad she bothered with the scarf.

She hadn’t put on a bonnet today. She can’t stand the fuss of one. Ribbons flapping at her ears. It was uncommon - but she went without.

Simply tied her hair back into a low coiffured bun secured with a snip of wheaten muslin. By now and with lugging this basket across all of the Hampshire countryside, some straggles of hair have come loose. Flopping uselessly to her shoulders.

She ducks her chin into her scarf to escape the exposure of a battering bitter gale, and continues trudging on with wearied, aching determination. She always trudges on. She has too. Is always the one who must endeavour to continue, no matter how bleak she feels.

It gets tiring, carrying great tonne boulders of expectations on her shoulders. She likes to think she bears the task nobly.

As her Mother takes great pains and lengths to always endlessly remind her; she is the vessel in which all hopes for the survival of the Ashton family, are stored.

She will make a good marriage match; to a gentleman of high rank or fortune - preferably both. She will save the estate from destitution. Her sisters from ruin. And her father from debtors prison. She will be the one to keep her family in the moneyed style to which they are accustomed. They will not lose Westwell to the bailiffs.

They have risen far within the ranks of society. And they will not lose their clutch or their pride. Or their respected place among it. Her fathers estate is not a vast one; but it is more than his father before him had. A meagre merchant selling spices and furs out of Putney during the Restoration.

Now the Ashtons are country gentry. With a modest dwelling of an estate, abutting a working farm. Westwell. A manor house of not much splendour and merely thirteen rooms. 

Built of gold cotswold stone with huge white windows looking out onto a self-effacing garden of some prettiness. There was a pond where swans flocked in summer. Enclosed wilderness all around. A plank of wood swing hanging off one big oak chestnut that stooped over the front of the house. To the back the garden is walled, full of sculpted beds and privets and the wide green lawn is rather uninspiring in this decimating winter

They had one gardener. Two maids. A cook and a Housekeeper. They live comfortably and hardly ever exceed their income.

Her mother hopes to change that this calendar year. She wants her eldest daughter promised to someone upstanding and rich.

Iris thinks her shrew of a mother would settle with wedding her to any man . So long as he looks pleasing in a cravat, and still has all his own teeth.

She treks on through the snow. Hoping. Dreaming. Dreaming for so many unattainable things.

Wishing her basket was lighter. Wishing her parents had sired a son. So that this evening she wouldn’t have to be bound into a pinching dress, and paraded around the Hearst’s ballroom as if she’s some prized slaughter pig at a county fair.

Wishing that she could instead stay home in her untrimmed, plain nightgown. No laced stays crushing her ribs. With a hot brick at her feet. A dog-eared Swift novel in her hands. Cracked open to the good passages. She’d read by tapered candlelight and be perfectly contented, poised to encounter spinsterhood.

Instead, a painful evening of savage society awaited her.

Poison filled smiles from nasty debutantes or their matronly mama’s. Sniping at her dress or her hair or her pale skin, or her lack of fortune. Crushed mangled toes from dancing with some portly red-faced Lord-whoever-from-wherever. One who stank of port, had bad breath, and tried to pinch her bottom with fat lecherous sausage fingers, when he thought no one was looking their way.

She has no aspirations for marriage or love. She’s not a fool. She doesn’t have her head swimming with fancies from novels. No rapturous desires of tall, sable-haired men, with chiseled marble bodies seducing her astray. No cloaked villain sweeping her away in the dead of night to send her to ruin, to then have her dashing savour ride in on horseback to rescue her.

If she’s one thing at all - it is sensible. She doesn’t like to reflect on the proposition of marrying some stranger simply to arrange the business of money and bearing him heirs. She’s not a broodmare-

She’s a _woman_. She has a thumping proud heart and a strong-working brain and she hopes there’s more measure to her life, than submitting her body and weak will over to be governed and quieted by a future, faceless husband.

She’s sure many girls of three and twenty have felt this way. She’s sure many generations upon generations of them will continue to do so, until women cease to be sold like chattel - or like cattle at market.

Sold solely to men for the priceless untarnished commodity that lay between their thighs. And based and viewed purely on that frail scrap of fleshed dignity, alone.

She wraps her coat tighter around herself. Distinctly feeling a sense of dread starting to slither sickly cool up her spine from the prospect of the evening ahead.

Mother will wrangle her into her finest restrictively crushing silk gown. Have the maid tug and pull her hair and wrench it into a pleasing style. Jabbing hair pins in her head. Mother will see to it that she splash plenty of Yardley’s water of jasmine blossom, orange and lavender on the pulses at her wrists, and at her neck.

Then, she’ll be practically shoved into the chest of every single eligible gentleman in the room tonight in the hope they deign her to be pleasing. She’ll be pushed and prodded and manoeuvred and pumelled-

And she’s exhausted. She only hopes she finds the strength to endure such torture-

She kicks through the frosted ground. Pebbles scatter and skit in her wake. She nudges the sparkling white stones with the toe of her cracked brown boots. Her feet were slowly growing numb. Toes stinging with cold. She should have worn some thicker stockings. Then again, money was not exactly a moderate opulence at home. They had to husband their resources as a family very carefully- which meant Iris couldn’t have some new leather half-boots for romping about the wilds of the countryside.

But she could have as many new hair combs, fans, or gloves and embellished stockings as she wanted. Anything that might help snare a man into visions of matrimony. Not wasted on such a thing as a new wool coat to help keep her warm in winter; or boots that didn’t let the muddy puddles seep in.

For appearances sake, the Ashtons wealth went solely into ballgowns, perfume and finery for their girls. Some household money of course went into sensibilities like candles, meat, flour and soap. Iris was taught that she should be hugely grateful for everything that was lavished upon her.

Flora so often griped at her that she was so lucky to have such amounts spent on her. She got new gowns of printed cottons and muslin and silks and whatever she wanted. Where her and Posy had to make do with alterations and hand-me-downs to their dresses and bonnets.

Flora was so blinded by jealousy and immaturity that she didn’t quite look - really _look_ at her sister - and realise that Iris didn’t really _want_ any of those things-

She ruminated on all tonight might bring her. She wondered what kind of state her silly sisters would both be in when she gets home. Already donning their paper curls, lacing each other into their stays and chemises already. Arguing over who wore the best pair of silk slippers they had between them.

Mother will be in one of her bitter moods. Trying to determinedly order all her girls ready for tonight.

Moods sour with each other already and they’d be seething and spitting nasty fury at Iris. She had new things especially for this ball tonight. New pair of satin gloves and a printed silk dress. They did not. They never did.

Iris would lend Flora her old reticule - the one Mother had bought for her from Bond street. And she’d give Posy her pearl hair comb to slide into her auburn coiffure. A little balm to both of them to gently encourage some sisterly affection. She didn’t want to be at war with them all night.

She’s halfway down the narrow pale road, kicking snowy stones, when an almighty sound kicks up over the horizon, barrelling in her direction. She turns her head back and hears the distant rhythmic rumbling of hooves hitting track and the clack and creak of enormous coach wheels.

Hardly surprising when this is the biggest road leading back to Pembleton, her little village.

She sees through the fog of snow, a huge black shape dominates the road. Moving fast. She lifts her skirts and steps onto the crunching grass so that the raring coach might pass her safely by. At the tremendous speed it’s going she reckons she didn’t have long before it caught up to where she’s walking.

She hears it gaining, closer and closer. Wood and hooves and snorting horses eating up the distance of the road. She dares a glance at the impossibly loud and fast carriage.

It’s a beastly thing. All looming black wood. A black liveried driver in grey wool coat. Two footmen clad the same, on the back stand. Black sturdy luggage safely stowed on the roof. Two hulking beasts of shimmering onyx shire horses are stamping and galloping and heaving the great thing along with no difficulty. Silvery wisps of air pour from their nostrils and the dripping whites of their eyes look nearly devilish past their full cupped blinders. The tack of black leather lost on their gleaming coal coats.

The noise is deafening now. It’s almost passing her. Kicking snow and frosty gritted mud out from under the churn of the hungry wheels.

She’s curious as to who could possibly be residing in such an opulent coach. No one from these parts, she’s certain of it. The richest Lord from here was two villages over on a vast estate. Lord Hexham. Who was one and eighty and had a hunched back. And he was a doddery old recluse. He hardly went raring around town in such an imposing manner.

When it draws level with her she dares a vertiginous glance up at the small arch of the door. A crest is splashed there in gold and scarlet. Like a splash of blood on a gold sword scabbard. Or a healing wound.

It’s no shock that the crest there is unfamiliar to her. It’s entwined with wolves and scarlet banners, and a shield crossed with swords. Some monstrous carnivorous coat of arms perhaps? Maybe this person’s ancestor’s had won victory in some ancient bloody battle dating back to the Normandy landings.

She looks up from the door and to her very great shock, she glimpses a man’s face.

It was a dark carriage, drawn to privacy with scarlet velvet curtains covering at the windows. But the one this side closest to her is peeled back.

Her heart thumps loud in her neck and her chest claws with slight panic and embarrassment having caught this gentleman’s eyes.

Such savage, unyielding eyes.

Bitterly black. Slicing outwards from an alabaster pale face. She barely made out features of a full proud face. A blunt roman nose, full pouting lips, and raven sable hair. Length; rakish.

It makes her inhale a sharp breath. Quickly averting her gaze. Embarrassed. Lowering her eyes.

Gawping openly at the upper echelons was never a good idea. They probably held her in the same standing as that of the mud on the bottom of their very polished boots.

He was probably some uppity Duke or Earl who didn’t wish to be gazing at the common stock. She looks to her feet. Feels the wind whip at the tendrils of her hair. Unfolds them from her scarf and whips them back over her face. Baring her neck. Snow lands on her skin. Flecks of it melt ripping like bee stings onto her hot throat.

Pale, corded, thrumming throat. Bared to the wind and the snow and the cold-

_He can hear her pulse and it’s like a sweet sirens call._

She feels the strangest sensation then; no one was looking at her. But it feels like they did. It feels as if eyes are pinning her down. Raking over her skin and assessing her.

When she looks back up, dazed, the rattling loud coach is past her now. Off into the distance, into the snow.

Foggy white and smeared and blurring into the horizon. Roaring away up the track road. Away from her sight. She blinks after it’s wake. Snow tangling into her lashes. She’s shivering now if she wasn’t before, and she can’t fathom why.

She switches the basket into her other arm. Let’s it take the painful strain of the still heavy thing. Items within clunk and thump around. She steps off the crusted grass and back onto the stony pave of the hard road.

She continues on; winding homeward. She thinks about her silk gown, and new pearl earrings. And then of darker things; like devilish horses, and eyes. Eyes darker than inky shadows and deeper rich, like charcoal.

As the coach thunders off into the snow. Rutting and cracking over every bump on the road, Kylo shifted back on the scarlet bench seat. He lifts the curtain on the back window with a suave flick of his fingers, and set his black gaze once more back down the track road.

Looks back upon the lone girl in the blue coat who was walking there.

  
The scent of her still cloyed up in his throat - _Oh_ , and in all the best ways.

He scented her from a mile down the road. Lavender, clary sage and sharp heat of bursting peppermint on salty skin.

  
The musk of her made him pant and his chest ragged. His arousal and bloodlust stirred in his chest. The drooling gnashing hell hounds of his appetite waking up and baying to be fed.   
  


He watches her hair sway over her neck. A big gust of frosty wind blew her flavour right into his path.

_His eyes rolled back in his head as he savoured her._

It made his mouth water. He’d all but outright moaned. It’s been a few moons since he last fed. His nails dig into the upholstered scarlet bench. Muscles strained. Veins corded tight in his body. Pulled taut.

His butler, Jomar. Speaks up from where he is sat opposite.

Blue silk Dastar covering his silver hair. His goatee beard was arrowhead shaped and always neatly trimmed. It stood out all the more from his bronze skin. His Punjabi cadence Kylo always thought was like cinnamon dashed in milk. He had a comforting warm voice.

“I wonder, shall you like the society hereabouts, your lordship?” He seeks curiously. Melting walnut eyes finding Kylo’s over his gold half moon spectacles, and looking past the small red leather backed Voltaire, open in his hands.

Lord Ren smirks. His eyes glimmer. Cool and hungry. Silver black like daggers.

“Absolutely.” He wets his lips. “The local cuisine looks _delicious_.”

~

  
  



	2. Outsider

Night falls dark and still over the landscape brushed with snow. Westwell’s gardens seemed crushed under the icy weight.

It seemed the heavy blanketing of it muffled and blotted out all sound. But it’s a peaceful intrusion.

The huge square windows of Westwell Manor are flaked with frost and each square of glass glimmers gold with the tall candle holder placed in each one. A stick of fire and gold warding off that indigo night that shrouded heavy and deep in the sky above. Trying to spill into the window.

Iris is sat in her small bedroom. A tomb or a cell, really, was how it felt to her some days. Wall to wall draped in pretty Morris flowered wallpaper of white sprawling flowers with navy and blue birds and country vines.

Her double bed with twisting pillars of dark mahogany twine up to the wheat thick canopy that is draped over it. The mattress is layered in a fluffy champagne coloured eiderdown and white embroidered scalloped-lace pillows. The floors are dark walnut wood, and they creak wildly. Groaning. Cold and heat seeps easily through the cracks between them in winter. Chilling her toes. And in summer the warmth of the creaking cracking house bleeds upwards.

The walls of her bedroom are sparse but some have photo frames of embroidery or pressed flowers she’s collected over the years held neatly in small wooden frames. She has a small stool by her bed with the tapered candle lit on a brass holder. Apricot flame coming off the long drip of the Chantilly candle. Casting pools of orange up the warm-ivory-bone of the walls. A jug of dried wildflowers sat on that little stool spices up the air. Dried lavender and clary sage, wild shasta daisies and a green-pink hydrangea bulb. Her little stack of modestly worn books lay piled neatly on the floor next to her bed.

Iris is sat at her dresser, pulled near the window. With the roaring fireplace just to her left. Above the mantel hung a gilded mirror on the chain. Candlesticks alight, set on the dresser and on the alcove of the sash window. Two candles flank the oval of the mirror she’s sat looking into.

Mother is behind her, dressed and ready in her purple muslin gown and her white fichu. Stabbing pins into her daughters hair. Every time she sticks in another pin, Iris winces. Blinks through the stinging pain of it. She was attempting a more fashionable colonial coiffure. Easier to produce.

“Your hair is much too thick to curl properly.” Her mother addresses her idly. Snappily. Tugging back a section back behind her ear.

“Posy and Flora have much finer hair.” She offers.

As ever. Iris doesn’t know what to say to that. Should she offer an apology? Should she agree? Disagree? She fails to know how to be.

So she remains silent and watches her mother’s reflection in the looking glass as she almost crossly dresses her hair.

Caroline Ashton was maturely beautiful woman. With skin as clear as fine porcelain - like smooth cream. Even if sporting wrinkles by her mouth and eyes belying her later age. She had hair exactly the same as Iris’s. Except her mother’s was such an opulent shade of cinnamon-black. Stroked with streaks of silver like lightning bolts had struck through. Her eyes were clear silver. Two discs of shining moonstone. Very mysterious eyes, Iris had always thought.

Lately those eyes seemed permanently hardened over like rainstorms. Clouded over with disappointment at her eldest.

Always wishing she could do more to see more of the love that used to linger there. Nowadays it seemed like Caroline could only look at her and see the blemishes. Only see the wrongs.

The frown lines seemed deeper. The cutting remarks appeared more frequent. She was always telling her to sit up straighter, correcting her posture. Smoothing out the wrinkles in her dresses. Always picking. Forever finding something lacking.

Iris likes to think she was doing it out of an abundance of love. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer to her that it’s really about the opposite. It’s not about her wanting to provide for Posy or Flora or Father.

It’s purely selfish. It’s all about her ensuring they don’t lose any respect in the ever omnipotent eyes of society.

If her mother thought less about their image; perhaps Iris could love her more.

As it is. Coldness and distance lay weighty between them. Thicker and frostier than the snow outside. The ground between their geniality and affection lay strewn and twined with thick vines of barbed thorns. No way to tread such hallowed ground without drawing blood.

“Posy and Flora have had their hair in bows all day.” She points out. She shuts her eyes and grits her teeth as another pin slams into her skull. Yanking her hair right at the roots.

“And they’ve taken all week to fret over choosing their dresses.” Iris adds.

She looks up to see those steel swords of mama’s eyes cutting into her in the reflection. Mouth was a grim line.

“You should know by know what’s expected of you, Iris. And not take the matter so lightheartedly.” She warns.

“They can take balls seriously, as real chances of finding matrimony. Why can’t you?” She asks with a cruel tone.

“Mama. Flora and Posy haven’t taken anything seriously since they day they were born.” Iris insults plainly. Speaking truth.

“You know they only delight in attending ball’s and assemblies because they wish to make greater spectacles of themselves in front of soldiers from the militia, and get flirted with, by any creature sporting breeches.” She adds.

“Atleast _they_ try.” Caroline cuts in.

“And I do not?” Iris asks. Flatly exasperated. She huffs.

“You only danced with _three_ men at last months assembly. It’s simply not good enough. You must try harder. Your sisters may have prettiness and confidence in unholy abundance. And they apply it. You wither away and that will never gain you a husband. For _heavens sake-_ What upstanding man wants to marry the silent wallflower?” She declares gruffly.

She fiddles with her new satin gloves sloped in her lap. Her dress was ivory silk printed with frail gold flowers and embroidered scalloping on the hem.

There’s Van Dyke pointed lacing around her neckline and the same embroidered trim on the three-quarter sleeves. White helped ‘lift’ her ash eyes apparantly. It was fresh out it’s box from the dressmakers, Madame Larousse, on Pembleton high street. Indian printed silk and Italian lace. The most expensive fabric in stock.

Their maid, Julia, had earlier laced her stays so tightly over her cotton chemise, Iris worried she broke several ribs. Her nails stung into the wood of her bed post.

Mother was stood getting her gown ready on the other side of the room. Watching her eldest have the breath thumped right out of her lungs. “Tighter.” She ordered. Iris clutched a hand at her stomach.

“A man could go a long way without seeing a bust like yours Iris. We must take advantage of it.” She comments wryly. Julia tugs tighter on the strings. Iris’s jaw clenched all the more.

By the time she’s finished her waist is tucked right in and her breasts clasped high on her chest, almost so high they hit her chin and there’s scant space between her cleavage and her areole tumbling free, this gown is so low cut.

She tugs it up higher when mother isn’t looking. Spectacles of her fertility not quite on such prominent display now.

She fancied this silk of it was so fine and thin - and clung so tight to her body, one breath of wind would closely reveal her wide hips. And doubtless her chemise and garters could be glimpsed through the thin sheer sheen of it.

And here she was now, submitting to her mothers inspection and brutal torture. Laced up in her silken gown. With her best stockings, and slippers. Earlobes dropping pearls, and a head full of silver decorative pins and an ivory comb.  
  


Speaking of which, the latter is just being wrestled into the weave of her coiffured braided bun, at the back.

“There...” Her mother says. Fussing with a few strays. Tucking them in where they should belong. As she picks at Iris’s mud hued hair. She idly asks her questions.

“Will you be dancing with Armitage tonight?” She asks. Insinuated, more likely.

Iris averts her eyes and pats the back of her hair. Checking it in the glass.

“Will he be in attendance?” She asks offhand. As if she had no clue.

“Of course he will. Brendol knows the Hearst’s very intimately.” Her mother shrilled.

“You _will_ dance the first minuet with him and I’ll hear no more fuss about the matter.” She orders. Cold eyes finding her daughters in the mirror.

Armitage Hux was the son of a strict local army colonel. Tall, dashing, hair as brilliant as copper and eyes as cool as teal sea-foam in contrast. He was lean and willowy in stature. Always bedecked finely in his uniform. Buttons gleaming, blushing blood of a red coat brushed and pressed to within an inch of it’s life.

He’s not a bad man - he doesn’t drink or laugh at her. Or try and fondle her in a darkened corner.

He just strikes Iris as being incredibly vain and undeniably haughty. He thinks all the world should be owed to him. 

He only wanted to talk medals and glory and rank. How he was a model soldier. And so admired the bravery of gunfire and glory in battle. He’d never even _seen_ battle - his father bought him a conscription and shook hands and pulled favours to get him a high rank in the military. Sergeant Hux, he now was.

He didn’t seem to be able to equate soldiers and uniforms and weapons with actual war or combat. But liked to boast about how deadly he was. His sharp reflexes. His skill as a swordsman and marksman. Iris felt like stuffing cotton in her ears - or sticking her eyes with pins all night - anything but listen to Armitage spew out his toy soldier reveries.

“He is a very agreeable man. You would do well to land him, Iris. He would make a most affable husband and a good match.”

“I barely know him, Mama.” Iris pointed out.

“You don’t need to _know_ him. That is no hindrance to a proposal of marriage.” She says crossly. “You need not know your husband. You merely have to do your wifely duties by him.” She reminds.

_My duty of keeping my mouth shut and my legs and womb wide open,_ Iris thinks.

“I thought I heard he was courting Mary Simpson?” Iris pipes up. Uncurling two tendrils of delicate hair from in front of her ears.

“She has barely a thousand pounds a year. Brendol would never stand for him marrying such a girl.” Caroline declares mightily. Speaking in derision of the girl who was beneath them in every sense.

“Besides. Lord Hearst says there will apparently be a very rich gentleman from the continent in attendance tonight too. A Lord Ren, from Bavaria. It would do well to seek him out.”

“Every matronly mama worth her salt will be throwing their daughters in his path. I do hope he doesn’t trip on the sheer number of them crushed underfoot.” Iris says lightly. Pulling on her gloves.

“And if he is a Lord, why has he deigned in all his lofty power to grace us with his presence, and to come to a small county rather than go to vastly over stocked marriage mart in London?” Iris questions.

“Don’t be so blockish, Iris. Maybe he has business here to attend. Mrs Wilson told me this morning that he’s bought Hellford Park out in its entirety. Now _that_ takes an extraordinary fortune.” She corrects.

Iris looks directly at her mother. She spies the gleam of want in her eyes. The hunger that such a sum she could snatch up in her hands.

“Lord’s marry Heiresses to sugar mills who are poised for ten thousand pounds, or widowed old Duchesses with vast crumbling estates. Why would he in his lofty state and means, lower himself to wed a girl of simple country gentry, with a barely three thousand pound dowry?” Iris sarks.

Mama gives her a pointed look. Like a ream of needles pressing in her skin.

“Then you will make a even better spectacle in front of him. And show him how elegant and courteous country girls can be and see if you can’t win him over that way.” She insists direly. As if she were plotting a serious military offensive.

“If he is a Lord, he will be titled. Titled means landed money and dignity.” Her hair is yanked yet again. “He could well be the answer to all our prayers.”

_Your prayers,_ Iris points out rudely inside her head.

“He could be a hideous old letch.” Iris says, rightly.

Mother stabs one final pin into her head. As if in revenge. “Looks aren’t everything- Money. Station, and respect? That is forever enduring.”

So are things like love, intimacy, friendship and happiness. Those things endure too. But Iris can’t imagine her acerbic mother has ever felt happy or loved a day in her life; she likes to think her marriage, when it comes, shall be different.

She ends the conversation on that dazzling note. Iris’s scalp is on sore-fire by now.

The door opposite them creaks as it’s burst open. Impending footsteps barrelling down the creaking floorboards of the corridor shortly before signalled their arrival. Flora and Posy.

Fully gowned and gloved and perfumed to high heaven, with their hair pulled in elaborate coiffures on their heads. They had perfect curls. Perfect flounces and ruffles on their dresses. Cheeks a healthy pink. Eyes wild bright with excitement.

They look like blooming silk roses in a summer garden. Iris feels more and more like a singed daisy in her own gown.

Flora was dressed in a cobalt muslin, with a roller print of dandelions laid in pinstripes down the fabric. Posy was in a demure blush pink cotton. With lace trim tumbling over the neckline. And Iris sees she wins the honour of wearing the rose silk slippers. Flora is in some ivory ones that have seen more mends and fixes than is earthly possible. For silk slippers didn’t come cheap.

Both her sisters have much lighter colouring; they both still have the chowder grey Ashton eyes.

Flora’s hair however, is darkly mousy brown. Golden like toffee leaves that come off the trees in autumn. Posy is far more chestnut red. Blazing bonfires and russet red embers. Overall more enchanting than that of Iris twigs and sticky-mud hued locks.

They are a barrage of noise and silliness as they barge into Iris’s room. Flora flops onto the end of the well made bed and Posy nosily inspects herself in the looking glass over the fireplace. Preening. Voices overlapping.

“ _Mama!_ Did I tell you what Fleur told me earlier today?” Posy insists. Flora speaks louder over her, in order to be heard.

“Mama....Have you seen my pink silk shawl for I’m sure I left it in the drawing room.”

“I haven’t seen your shawl, Flora. You should take better care. And what did Fleur say, my dear?” Caroline asks in a soft voice.

Whilst fixing strayed hairs at Iris’s nape. Pulling and pinching. She had no softness reserved in store for Iris. She rather wants to roll her eyes at that.

“There will be a gentleman of certain lordly magnificence at the ball tonight.” Posy sing-songs. Aiming her teasing words at Iris. Who gives her a cutting look at her bubbly behaviour. Steel daggers made of her grey eyes.

“He’s said to be most handsome, sable haired, and devilishly tall. And he’s single. And Lord Hearst says he’s a recluse who barely leaves his castle, so we’re very honoured he’s coming and he has eighty-thousand a _year_.” She awards with great enthusiasm. Flora giggles.

“Maybe you should set your cap at him, Iris.” Flora jabs teasingly. “We could all be vastly improved by such a match you know. I could finally stop wearing these hideous thin old slippers.”

Iris wished to point out that she wasn’t being induced into matrimony merely to vastly improve the quality and state of her siblings footwear.

And quite wondered if he sister knew all that she’d have to undertake in making such a match - all she’d have to give up to be some man’s wife. All she’d have to _do_ -

“She won’t. For she’s already got a suitor whose madly in love with her.” Posy insists.

“Hux is not in love with me, Posy. Don’t be ridiculous.” Iris says. For starters she wasn’t his red uniform or his army commission. Those were the things he was resolutely enamoured with.

Standing from the dresser as she speaks, and going to where her new slippers were laid out by the maid on the bed. Flora eyes the silk things with jealous disdain. Iris fixes her satin gloves up over her elbows. Disappearing under her sleeves. Mother is too busy fussing with Posy’s neckline - tugging it up to cover more of her second youngest’s chest. She protested so at the action.

Iris took the opportunity to slide a small pearl hair comb into Flora’s hand. Her favourite one. The one with coral flowers and paste amber gems on it.

Iris flickers a look over the mother and a silent understanding passes between the sisters. ‘ _Put it in, in the coach in the dark. So she doesn’t see.’_

Flora smiles awfully wide up at her sister. Grateful that she shared out her pretty things. Flora was the youngest - the youngest daughter deserved nice trinkets too.

“If you’re all ready we’d best be off soon. The roads are icy. It will take an age. I won’t have us be late.” Mama orders out to all her girls.

She turns her head to Iris “Fetch your things and the velvet cloak. And for heavens sake don’t be long. We don’t have all night.” She frets.

Marching out the room after rearranging some of Posy’s curls. Barking at Flora as she passed to fix the wrinkle in her gloves. The door grated and whines as she shuts it, lock rattling in the frame.

Iris savours the silence - the crackling of the fire. The owl hooting off in the tree tops outside her window. She lets it soothe her. Let’s out the deepest sigh as they’re now left alone.

She crosses to her wooden wardrobe cabinet by the door, and opens the door to search for her blue velvet cloak. She throws it around her shoulders and ties it up. Posy hands her sister her cream silk reticule.

“She just wants you to marry well.” Posy says with some attempt at comforting.

Iris nods, glumly stroking her sisters hand in thanks. Looking into her earnest young face. Still so full of innocence and hope.

Her heart shaped little face so full of impish naivety.

“She might do not to make me feel exclusively like a breeding mare to be sold to the highest bidder for marriage at every conceivable turn.” Iris says wryly.

Angrily shoving a meagre few possessions into her reticule from her dresser. She looks down at her empty dance card that mother would see absolutely filled with names by the end of the night.

She wipes away an angry tear from the corner of her eye with a handkerchief that Flora gives her. Her anger crowded and crackled the room. These two didn’t deserve her ire, after all.

She sighs yet again. Letting the churning anger eating at her bleed out. Frustration filtering away. She plasters on a smile. Posy steps forwards to her exasperated sister.

“Can I borrow your diamond droplet earrings? They’d go very well with my dress...” She asks coyly. With her hands behind her back.

Iris rolls her eyes. Maybe they did deserve just a little bit of ire after all-

“You are both enormous pests.” She says. Guiding them out her room.

“Come on. Lest we hold mother up and I don’t much fancy our chances then.”

She corrals her pests of sisters downstairs. Makes sure they too are cloaked and ready. They have their gloves and she does uncurl Posy’s palm as they’re heading out the door, dropping the diamond and earrings into them. They sparkle in the moonlight.

“Lose them and mother will have your head.” She whispers to her in caution as they alight the warmth of the house into the cold sting of the night air.

Snow crushed under their slippers as they make for the coach. Slipping to step up inside the cold wooden enclave of it. Rubbing their cold hands together to create some heat.

It was just the Ashton ladies in attendance tonight. Father cared little for balls. Something mother sniped at him for regularly. Ernest Ashton would far rather stay home of a night with his ledgers and his books and his brandy than subject himself to the silly gossip and frivolity of idiotic society people present at balls.

Her father was a tall, quiet man. Sturdy and aged as an old oak. Strong and strapping figure even in his later years. He quietly took interest in the world where her mothers inclination was to devour it.

He had an open broad face. With tame blue eyes and thick greying hair. He was a studious man. Often kept to his study or the gardens. He enjoyed his ornithology and his Entomology books. He collected butterflies. All pinned out in cases in his study. Lining the walls.

It was a place she found infinite comfort in. Wandering into her fathers study. His entomology collection like dots of silken colour in their cases. Old leather books and volumes and manuscripts. Edifying proud in their papery silence. The old wood of his desk worn by years and years. The smell of the study. Of old leather and pipe tobacco. And peppermints from the little jar he kept on his desk.

He didn’t press Iris in the same way her mother always prevails to do. But then she sees the frayed gems and worn and mended holes in his clothes. The faded material in his waistcoat. How he hasn’t bought himself new shoes in two years.

That’s how she can put up with every snipe and every cross word that spits out her mothers mouth.

Iris sometimes quite wondered how her parents ever stood each other for any length of time to bear any children. They were entirely separate people whose interests did not align. They agreed on very little. And settled for that.

It’s so cold in the coach they can see their breath as they bump and shift along the icy roads. Trees make terrible dark shapes in the near distance, beyond the frosted glass of the coach door window. Iris sits, peering out. Watching the full bowl of the moon slither white off the silver and black landscape. Off the snowy fields and perched on the roofs of the hamlet of houses they pass by.

The carriage crawls slow up the winding drive of the Hearst’s three acre estate. Horses hooves hitting the hard paved path. Clopping in the night air. Skipping over the frost. They’re but mere minutes from exiting the coach, when mother decides to speak up and issue a few last desperate words of strict orders upon her eldest;

“Take every opportunity Iris. I won’t have it said in the gossip sheets tomorrow that you didn’t even try.” Caroline insists. Fussing with her own thick muslin cloak draped over her lap.

Iris looked at her mother then. Across the dark carriage as she tuts at the specks of lint sullying Flora’s cloak where she’s sat next to her. Picking it away.

She strongly suspected Caroline Ashton could have the whole world in her palm or on a string; and _even_ then she’d find fault in it. Pluck displeasing bits of it out like loose threads.

She has that irate frown darkening her features. Cloudy set in her eyes. Posy’s little gloved hand reached across and held her sisters tight. Squeezing it in comfort sat there in the dark. Iris turns and looks to see Posy’s heart shaped face beaming up at her.

“You should let us introduce you to Captain Clifford’s friends Iris. They really are the most splendid fun. I’ve heard many of them say they quite fancy you, you know.” Posy grins. Whispering hushed to her sister to keep her spirits buoyant.

Iris strokes her hand and she can’t help smiling. More at her always sunny hopes. How bright her outlook on life was. She saw ball’s for the fun they were meant to be.

A dance, a party, a celebration.

Posy wasn’t yet tarnished by the knowledge that her hopes for future happiness depended on her behaving well and taking things seriously. It stopped being fun and became a chore. Iris lost her starry eyed wonder about ball’s years ago.

She hoped she could help Posy keep her gleaming eyed wonder and fun for just that bit longer. She would suffer every second of misery to keep it that way if she must.

She squeezes her hand back. “Thankyou. That’s very sweet. But I fear I shall be otherwise engaged in dances.” She excuses.

Besides, most of the young Militia men she met were very wet behind the ears. And all madly enamoured with exhausting dances and infatuated with every beautiful young lady in attendance. Declaring they fell head over heels with every girl they so much as walk past. She finds their overeagerness and exuberance a little trying.

Before long, they draw up the grand old stone columns abutting the front of the huge house.

An immense hulking beast of a thing. Lit with autumn-blaze torches in the night. The coach lurches to a creaking uneven stop. Jolting. And a helpful gold liveried footman in a powdered wig steps to and opens the door to help the ladies out.

Caroline doesn’t even glance at the man. Looks right through him. Flora flutters a flirty smile. Posy and Iris offer a polite snippet of thanks.

The Ashton ladies make their way up the torch lit steps and into the greatly heaving bustling foyer of the Hearst’s grand house.

Renford Manor was one of the finest houses in the county. The gardens were splendid. There was a maze and a famed marble garden gazebo.

A great split imperial staircase opens into the large cool foyer. All ivory marble. Hues of Eggshell and ice. Imposing, echoing and cold. Footsteps rattle like claps up to the ceiling. Distant notes of the small orchestra float through the air like zipping flapping insects.

Everything glimmers. The chandeliers that drip with gold and crystal. The old pearl and sharp onyx pointed tiles on the floor look like they’ve been scrubbed raw. They gleam almost too brightly.

They hand over their cloaks to more footmen to be put away. Letting their ball gown splendour come forth. Iris is almost crushed by the amount of people there are in attendance here tonight. Lady Hearst was known to stuff her parties to the seams. The whole county, and all of the two neighbouring ones, had most likely been invited.

Mama encourages them all up the staircase. Idly smiling greetings in passing to her matrons of her acquaintance. Iris skims one hand along the smooth cold of the marble banister. Holding her skirts up as her slippered feet hit each step. Steps firm and steady.

They come to one of the big main ballrooms. Looking through the scope of many double doors, leading onto another room and the next and the next furniture pushed aside. There was such a crush of so many ladies and numerous gentlemen packed in. Coats of all colours on the men. The spectrum of silks and cotton dresses so vast, it quite made her head spin.

Flora excitedly giggles and slips away. A flurry of laughter erupts and she joins hands with a little gaggle of her more intimate friends.

Iris raises a brow at her behaviour, not surprised to see that she caught a glimpse of a fair few red coated members of the militia in that particular direction. Mother huffs and gruffly tells Flora, through gritted teeth, not to linger too long.

Iris and Posy linger by mother as they chat to an elderly companion. Mrs Bishop. An ever worrying woman, Who ventured the world was going to end if there was slightly too much rain. She was practically apoplectic about the snow. Iris shares a look of pain with Posy. Who excuses herself with a bob of a curtesy to go find Flora.

“Pest.” Iris smiles at her as she slips away from conversing will dull matrons about the impending end of civilisation and the earth as they knew it. Anymore and Iris will be forced to rush for a vinaigrette of smelling salts to revive the poor dear when she swoons.

Iris stands with her hands folded demurely in front of her. Her eyes wandering over the party in full swing behind her.

The crush of noise, music and heat and bodies. Candies flicker doomed shapes copper and black up the light walls. The tall windows are guarded with heavy emerald draperies. Cascading waterfalls of apple green. Spilling and tumbling like grassy hills.

The windows glimmer like yellow square gemstones from the candles in their stands dotted everywhere. The dark floorboards glow with it too. Patches of orange inbetween the shadows.

The ballrooms, of which there were three, all adjoined by French pocket doors, are kept fairly dark. Lit only by the honey slither of candles reaching apricot slithers of light at every corner. People chatter and laugh to the din of a faint violin chorus of Mozart.

Laughter, Baritone gruff and the sparkling light of ladies chuckling delight flutters up to the ceiling. The room seems to burst at the seams with it all. Like a room full of butterflies. The heat, the noise, the voices and music. It was almost too much. Everything is palpable and it stings and rips at her eyes and ears.

They eventually depart from the hysterical Mrs Bishop. Leaving her fanning herself on a settee. Trying not to succumb to a fit of the vapours.

They make their way through the ballroom. Chatting and conversing and being mangled in the almost too heaving crowds. She loses count of the amount of times her toes get stepped on. Or elbows sharply prodded into the soft of her back as people pass.

Eventually; much to her mother’s delight, Iris is propositioned by a young gentleman from the militia, into a dance. There seemed to be no sight of Hux yet. Much to Mama’s chagrin.

He’s very polite and puppyish, delivers her safely back to her mothers side when the polka dance is through. Kisses her hand, declares her daughter a fine dancer, then is off onto the next partner.

They are lingering on the far side of the dance floor, just idly watching. In full view of the doors and the adjacent ballroom. Through the two sets of double doors either side of a great roaring stone fireplace. It’s light casting copper over every dancer.

“We won’t waste our time on him.” Mother harrumphed when he leaves. Looking with disdain as they watched him ask Primrose Charleston to dance the next.

“Mama. It was merely a dance.” Iris points out with a futile smile. “Don’t tell me you were picking out wedding attire and embroidered initial pillowcases.” Iris mocks.

That earns her a sharp look. She smiles in forbearance right back at her mother.

Her cheeks now pinkened and her eyes bright from the exercise. She likes dancing. When her partner isn’t a clumsy one, or reeks of port or body odour, or wine, or has wandering letching hands. It’s actually rather enjoyable.

“We should be setting our sights rather more higher than some penniless officer.” She insists. Watching the couples twirl and sway in front of them.

“Heaven forfend I dance with a man sheerly for the joy of it.” Iris concludes.

Caroline tuts in exasperation. Mumbles under her breath. “You do so _vex_ me greatly sometimes, Iris. Even worse than your sisters.” She grumps.

Deep down inside, Iris is a little proud of that accomplishment.

A flurry of footsteps and squeaking squeals and suddenly Flora and Posy burst into view where Iris and her mother are stood.

Their voices are high pitched and they’re panting with excitement. Flora slings her hands into Iris’s and twirls her around with elation. Iris stumbles in the circle Flora leads her in. Posy is stood by Caroline grinning up a storm.

“Mama, Iris. He’s _here!_ He’s here and he’s coming this way!” Posy giggles. Iris and her mother remain perplexed.

“Who is, my dear?” Caroline seeks. Frowning a little.

“He is surely _the_ most handsome man I ever seen. And _so_ tall. Did you see him Flora? That chest...” Posy flatters.

“Taller than any man I’ve ever met. And so well built. Such stature.” Flora says back.

“And he has dark eyes, Did you notice?” Posy asks.

“Of course I noticed! _Very_ dark eyes. They are positively enchanting.”

“Bewitching.” Posy giggles.

“And his shoulders in his coat. So _large_.”

“For goodness sake, lower your voice-“ Iris chides at the both of them, glancing around the ballroom. Trying to decipher who they were so flustered and flapping about.

Her eyes don’t make it past the door-

The room seems to have slowed. The dancers are distracted. People around the fringes of the ballroom chatter louder. Deafening din rising. Gossip flourishing.

For Lord Hearst is at the entrance of one of the double doors, conversing with someone, and that someone walking by his side, is one of the broadest and most strapping men Iris has ever seen in her whole life.

He wasn’t just a _man_.

He was entirely _too_ much, man.

“ _That’s_ Lord Ren. The handsomely rich one all the way from Bavaria.” Flora hisses to them all. “I’ve never _seen_ a gentleman more strongly built, or beautiful.” She giggles loudly.

“I beg of you, lower your voice.” Iris chides. Pearl earrings jitter as she moves her head. Ash eyes governed by lintels of her brows creased up in a light frown.

Everyone’s eyes in this small stale society, is fixed solid upon the sight of this newcomer. Hungrily devouring this unfamiliar brooding man.

Obsidian jacket. Snowy shirt. Scarlet cravat like a bloodied noose around his neck, with a seers eye of a winking diamond pin studded in the knot. He radiates charm and magnificence. And masculine appeal.

“He’s in mourning to be wearing such dark colours.” Mother presumes. “How unusual for a man.”

“Don’t fret, Mama. Lady Hearst assures me he’s most certainly single. Now, Iris might have her chance at him after all...” Posy cackles.

Iris rams an elbow into the bony cradle of her sisters petite hip.

“Do try and endeavour to behave.” She chides to Posy. Whispering harshly.

This mysterious Lord is unfashionably attired in all black. Perhaps he is in a state of mourning? Ink black breeches cling tight to his strong thighs and wide wide hips and shining boots come to his knees - the wrong sort of footwear for a ball but he doesn’t appear to notice. Or even care.

He had an air about him that couldn’t be ignored. The dark clothes. Sable hair. It was long too. Far too long by societal standards. It curled at his neck. Swept in tumbling waves back from his face.

He’s scanning the room like he hates everything and everyone in it. A soured scowl on his face. The softness of his full lips are pursed and there’s a predatory quality to the way his eyes flicker around the crowds. He seems above it all. Distant. Untouchable. He was a Lord - he held himself superior as one as if a different species.

“Fleur told me he’s quite the scandalous man....” Flora begins.

“I heard he was married. Once before, but she turned mad and killed several servants. So he locked her in the dungeons and she’s still here raking her fingers to the bone at the stone walls to get out.”

Iris wants to roll her eyes. Now it’s Posy’s turn for interjection;

“And I heard that his castle is haunted and full of ghosts. And he seduces young noble women and then sacrifices and feeds them to the devil. Maybe he’s prowling for next victim?” She gasps frenziedly.

“You two need to stay clear away from anymore novels.” Iris scoffs.

She lets her eyes slip back over this Lord’s frightening exterior. She focuses on the dark pits that were his eyes. They seemed oddly familiar. As if she’s glimpsed them before. In a fanciful daydream, maybe- or maybe it was a dreadful nightmare.

They’re too far away to make out their true colour. But it must be a truly dark for the way they eat up all the light and glitter like rough cut gemstones lost to shadow.

His arms folded behind his back pulls his coat right across his chest. Exposes the musculature of him: he is big and beastly. There was no denying; his figure is redoubtably masculine. Intimidating and strong- meaty arms, no tapering away at his waist. He was entirely built of great slabs of muscles.

A warriors figure through and through.

Iris thought that such a body frame belonged in a previous age. A more ravening one. A cutthroat one. That stature was suited to a gigantic rampaging viking or a crusading knight in steel armour.

Quite why she thought so she can’t fathom. That big shape of his seemed unsuited to the setting of a dainty English ballroom. It seemed more natural for him to be on a battlefield slicked up and splattered in the blood of his enemy’s.

She watches as he boredly sizes up the room before him. An arcing sweep of his eyes and he’s done with it. Thrown aside all interest. Devouring all pitiful excuses for life. As if he’s looking or searching for something...

Then he looks _right_ at her-

His eyes spear directly into _her_. See’s her. Meets her grey gaze and keeps it. Steals it away beyond her reckoning.

One side of his lip curls up. His eyes churn to look nearly honey gold in the light. Trick of the mind. All in her head. It was surely just the candles malforming the shade-

But it seemed more than him just seeing her. It was as if he could gaze right through her. Pierce her skin. Puncturing her very soul - she’s sure.

Her whole body feels his looking at her. She thrashes and aches.

If she has one. Some flimsy scrap of quivering human spirit in her, it is quaking and trembling now, and very much intoxicated by this man.

Her cheeks flush and she feels that betraying annoying heat slither down her neck and flourish at her breast. She swallows and blinks and tears her eyes away. She looks at her shoes cause she’s suddenly got a spinning head and her mouth is woolly.

That _look_ and those savage eyes had set a flame blazing right down to her bones. There’s something she feels deep down that almost seems strange. Uncertain yet resolute. A tug on her stomach. An unknown yearning.

She realises quickly that this was the same pair of eyes that stole her breath this very afternoon. The gentleman from the imposing black carriage. Twice now she’s locked eyes with him and stared.

He must think her either a raving simpleton _or_ a gawping lunatic.

“Iris. I do believe he’s staring at you.” Posy hisses with a wide impressed smile.

“Oh he is! He’s definitely staring.” Flora squeals. Tugging and shaking her sisters hand.

“Iris. Stand straight. Stop stooping. Chin up for heavens sake- look decent.“ Mother shrills through a gritted smile. Smiling demurely in the intended direction of Lord Ren. Preening herself like a flustered hen.

Iris dares another look up. Clasping her hands together delicately in front of her. At the front of her skirts. Him and Lord Hearst are mere feet away now.

“He’s coming this way! Mama! He’s coming over...” Posy grins. Flora laughs with her.

By now, Iris’s heart resembles a mad creature clawing at its cage, desperate to be free. Thumping and thudding her neck. Quivering nervous breaths leave her lips. Heartbeat hammering and pulsing in her ears.

_He’s looking at Posy or Flora,_ she thinks. _He must be. They always draw men like magnets. He’s not looking at me- he’s not. Really. He’s not-_

They are closer now. Lord Hearst and Lord Ren are mere metres away. The entire room seems to be holding its breath. Another dance starts up and she’s glad for that distraction. _  
_

Her cheeks remained flushed and she raises her eyes when the air shifts around them. She can scent the brandy and violet water coming off Lord Hearst. There is his stout waistcoat and his perfumed wig. Lord Ren appears unscented. But a fusion of aromas simply pour off his vast body.

Sandalwood oil. Probably used on that thick rakish mane of his. There’s something else too, something earthy darkly rich, that mingles with the musky new wool of his coat. Peppermint or spices. She can’t tell. It’s damnably distracting.

“Praise the lord in heaven. We are _saved_.” Her mother mumbles gladly under her breath. Smile wide and gentle. Artificial and superficial to hide her truer nature.

Lord Hearst and Lord Ren are right before them now. Right in front of them. “Mrs Ashton.” Lord Hearst begins in greeting. Iris watches her Mama curtesy politely to the old lord.

“Might I have the pleasure of introducing you to Lord Ren. An old acquaintance of mine...”

Iris looks from the doddery old form of the red faced Lord Hearst, up and up up, into the face of the dark stranger. The top of her head would barely come to brush at his collarbones. His eyes are still fixed on her face. A shock jolts through her like she’s been burned.

“Lord Ren, this is Mrs Caroline Ashton. And her daughters. Miss Posy Ashton. And Miss Flora Ashton...” Lord Hearst introduces. Flora and Posy bob demure little curtseys at him. Bowing their heads and smiling prettily like fools.

He barely glances toward them. His eyes were fixed on Iris.

“And this is her eldest daughter, Miss Iris Ashton.” Lord Hearst beckons to her. Stood back behind her two sisters, and almost guarded by her mother.

She curtseys. Chin to her chest and she bows her neck in a manner she hopes comes across as graceful.

Lord Ren smiles. It’s terrifying in its power and beauty.

It moves the corners of his lips. And he comes in a step closer. Advancing.

Posy and Flora flatten back a little. When one hand comes around from his back, Iris could see he had thick leather gloves on. As if entranced she reached out where his hand beckoned to hold hers.

She slipped her satin gloved hand into his big offered dark palm. It sits right in the middle of the wide thing. So dainty in comparison.

He brings her silken hand up. Bows down and lays a kind kiss to the back of it. His eyes hadn’t left her since he entered the room - they didn’t start shying away now.

_This is a man who is not shy. Not any bit of him._

He draws her hand down, very slightly. Freeing his lips.

“Enchanting to meet you, Miss Ashton.” He says.

Iris never knew a voice could be so deep. His voice sunk right to the core of her. Right through flesh and bone. Sinking deep. She’d expected a Bavarian accent. Or a continental lilt. But his accent is precise, crystal-cut English.

She blinks. Remembering she had a verbose vocabulary to make use of.

“It’s an honour to make your acquaintance, Lord Ren.” She gasps out with some hint of strength in her voice. When she lets her hand slips from his, her body feels strange. Her whole arm is left tingling. _  
_

She finds herself sighing as she pulls her hand back. He straightens his back with ease. She knows her mothers eyes are looking sharply at her so she remembers her politesse.

She feels like the whole world is watching them converse.

“Are you, enjoying... your time in England?” She seeks. “I understand you are recently arrived.”

“Very much.” He looks amused. “I haven’t been on these shores in- quite an age.” He says. She can’t help but feel there is something cryptic to his meaning.

“Do you mean to stay long, in Hampshire, your lordship?” Flora asks. Batting her long lashes up at him so much she could fan out a chandelier of candles if she’s not careful.

His eyes calmly flick across to the smallest Ashton sister. But linger back on Iris.

“Not long. But after tonight I think I’ve found sufficient reason to extend my stay.” His smile twitches smoothly once again _._

_“_ Are you enjoying Hellford Park, your lordship? Surely it is the finest house in the county, is it not?” Posy enquires.

Another flicker of those charcoal eyes to the other little Ashton. Really, there were too deuced many of them, Kylo thinks.

“It is an immaculate house. The snowy woods are very pleasant this time of year.” He agrees.

“Of course. The climates in Bavaria are surely similar. I imagine there is much snow on your own estate, your lordship?” Iris asks.

He seems pleased with her interjection. As if she were the only soul whose voice he wished to hear.

When he looked at her, it was like they were the only two people in this room. The only two that mattered. It’s just them, in the candlelight, cast by flame. As if no pairs of eyes are watching - when in reality there are hundreds looking in. 

“Indeed. The summers are short, and the winters are long and frigid. I am somewhat familiar with the clime of snow. It falls more gently here than in Bavaria.” His eyes glare warmly across at her. Increasing her blush.

Caroline steps in with a saccharine smile that showed far too much teeth. A leer it could rightly be called.

“You must come and dine with us at Westwell, Lord Ren. We would be honoured to receive you. We can promise you an elegant dinner service, and cards. Why we dine with six and twenty great and fine families around the county. We would be very much favoured with your visit. I wager you won’t get finer, prettier companions or better conversation elsewhere...” Mother boasts.

He smiles right at Iris and it spears into her hot chest like an iron poker stoked too long in the fire. Red hot.

“Indeed. I Thankyou greatly for the invitation. Madam.” Then his eyes grow blacker. “You have very fine daughters. God has blessed you three times over.”

Flora giggles a beaming smile. Posy bats her lashes and grins. Iris fiddles with her hands and examines the floorboards, reddening at his charm.

“I often think so, myself.” Mother preens.

“Of course all my girls are immensely beautiful. But, it is my Iris who is revered around these parts as a local beauty.” She lies.

“Mama.” Iris blushes crimson. Averting her eyes.

“A rumour well circulated indeed.” Kylo’s looking at her. And to her amazement. She bravely looks back.

“And she deserves every such compliment I can bestow.” Kylo adds.

“You are too kind, Lord Ren.” Iris smiles slightly at him. It makes his chest pound harder. Watching her bosom heave at the neckline of her dress.

His mouth waters. That same scent from this afternoon hits him square in the jaw like a rounded fist. He all but moans at the erotic pleasure of it. Of her sweet scent drifting up his nose. Stoking at his eager hunger.

He will tear something apart tonight, rip it limb from limb, and glut himself on that sweet penny-metal flush of blood spilling down his parched throat. And as he does- as he feasts and drinks and crimson drips from his maw, he will think of this moment; of her aroused scent tangled in his nose. Stirring his own lust to boiling point.

He bids the Misses and Mrs Ashton’s a goodnight.

Lord Hearst had more introductions for him to make. More simpering sickening people to meet. All the same. Savagely polite and viciously boring. Their superficial kindness and flattery turns his stomach.

A bevy of swans the lot of them. Preening and pathetic. He could barely hide his disgust at the stench of rotten perfume that beat off each one of their hot pulsing throats. All the vapid girls that desperate Mother’s shoved in his chest to make introductions.

_It was like the sheep throwing their own sweet little lambs out into the slobbering wolves._

  
If this were a less guarded age he might have already slipped away under guise of a romantic tryst in the garden, to drink a few of them dry.

Posy and Flora squeak and shake Iris’s arm after he passes. He is led around the ballroom, that great vast man. Introduced to all the good and the great. They gabble and squawk at their sister about how she’ll be the next Lady of Hellford Park.

She shushes them and sees it makes Lord Ren lock eyes with her from over where he towered loftily across the ballroom crowds.

Her heart starts beating wild again. A demure smile and she takes her eyes away elsewhere. And that heartbeat calls out to him like the pound of a war drum. A bell summoning him to worship.

_Oh yes_. He thinks. _She is the one._

_And she’ll do splendidly._

~

  
  



	3. Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tw for this chap: attempted assault 💕 enjoy my loves

When the coach door enclosed him in darkness and silence at the end of the evening, he tosses his head back to the scarlet velvet wall behind him and sighs out a deep releasing exhale. One of gladness.

It felt like the most cleansing breath he’d taken all damned evening.

Polite society hereabouts was _exhausting_ \- he rather preferred the one of years past.

The coach lurches away. Hooves clip on the icy midnight road, splashed in watery silver moonlight and mushed grey snow.

He listens to the glorious sound of his driver steering the horses to take him away from that stuffy ballroom and all its conceited occupants.

His body rattles and shifts on the softness of the upholstered bench with the rickety rumbling and turning of the carriage wheels. He lets it ground his restless temper.

He tries to recall the differences of when he last stepped foot on this island. What he’d said to Miss Ashton was no incorrect lie. He hadn’t been on these shores in an age. Not in 600 years atleast-

The last time he was here was during the crusades.

Everything was truly different in comparison. Back then he’d donned a hauberk chain-mail coat, with a conical helmet and a kite shield. He’d come here armed with only a horse, a long bow, a lance and his mail armour.

He’d been a Knight back then. In the third crusade of 1189. Fighting under the blood soaked banner of an Christian king to reclaim the Holy Land from a Sultan. He forgets the kings name, theres been so many he’s served. The lionhearted one perhaps? Faces and names of mere humans fade back into his mind like fog.

He’s seen so many lives begin and end. Even kings fade eventually. Too many mortals to list.

He remembers how hospitality and society was vastly different then. It was peasants and lords. Not all these lords, and dukes and earls and titles.

He recalls the wide unpolluted pure of cobalt sky and meadows of yellow daffodil flowers stretching on for miles. The kiss of their innocent nectar in the air. Exotic new spices, cloves and saffron and salt, animal sweat, dung, and musky furs and hides.

Salt of the earth humble houses were squat little wood straw huts. Dominated by the reaching slanted cold shadows, that came from the immensity of the rich grey-stoned castles.

People revered one God and their masters. Kylo was a knight. He was as good as _both_.

He has memories of great fine feasts with roast suckling pigs or boars turning on the great hall spit over the fire. The glaze of flame crackled pork skin and the dirt of ash. He recalls to this very day the sweet honey spice of mead on his tongue.

He remembers gorging himself on that honey-wine and devouring still bleeding slices of roast venison. That juicy ichor dripped down his chin. He ate meat off the bone like a starved dog. Drank flagon after flagon of barley ale to celebrate war and shedding the blood of the infidels.

He’d greedily dined with the Lords at their courts, scarfed down their hospitality like a beast. Then he’d gone and ripped apart a peasant girl or two in the forest afterwards.

Blood pulsing with matter and protein, and stomach groaning full with wine and blood. The next day when they found the decimated bodies they blamed the innocent deaths on the wolves. How appropriate-

He can remember this country in the spark of its infancy. He was there to see it born.

He was in Runnymede in Surrey in 1215, outside the fringes of the very room, watching, as the band of feuding Baron’s made the unruly King sign the Magna Carta. The cornerstone of British law. The first time a higher power was held accountable.

And now look at the pitiful state of it-

He’d been in the ballroom tonight of this grand house when those higher powers had sneered at his choice of footwear behind their snifters of French brandy and their fans. Foppish young ladies and men and all ignorant as to their place in the world they think they improve.

He was there at the very inception of all the powers and laws these vapid people obsess and fuss over. The one that gave all those preening lords and ladies their cursed little country and their dignity.

Maybe if he were a nicer, more patient man he could settle for people flattering him and wheedling him with idle compliments at every turn. Maybe if he were more vain, and knew his own handsomeness, he could accept those honeyed words. The sickly ones that rotted in his ears. If he was like them he could indulge their meaning.

He’s not like them. He never will be. And he’s glad of it.

He’s older. Laughably older. He’s a warrior. He’s seen every facet of life and history and war imaginable. And they are all nothing but specs of insignificant dust to him.

They think they matter, when all they do is fuck and breed and drink and dance. They marry well, and produce offspring to hold up their fetid titles, and stately homes. Then they die. And the next generation begins the same thing all over.

Some of those ignorant men tonight had the sheer nerve and effrontery to sneer up at him. Thinking he was so foreign and unfamiliar that he wouldn’t find the insult in their sniping adulations. The way they dug at his incorrect attire, his gloves, his boots. His dark clothing and his longer unfashionable hair.

Were he in a less forgiving mood he would have snapped a few necks in that room tonight. Stopped a few hearts from beating by breaking the ribcage open and reaching in with his bare hands.

He could’ve- it was vastly too tempting. But he had to assimilate to this petty crowd and open bloodshed wasn’t the way to do so. He has to remember rules and politesses about where to stand and what to discuss. It’s _infuriating_ -

He reaches a leathered hand to his neck and yanks open his neatly tied cravat. Jerking it lose from his neck so he could take a damn breath. Shoves the tie pin from it deep in his pocket.

Irritation pounds at his temples reminiscent of a headache; his throat is crackling and sore-dry.

He’s imbibed many glasses of Portuguese port and piddly French red wine. The crushed grape of its taste still sits on the back of his tongue and it’s simply not enough.

He needs to feed-

Aching to feel the blushing heat of it drool down his chin. Frothy pink where it blends with his drooling mouth.

He’s been hungry ever since Miss Ashton crossed his path that very afternoon. Her blooming innocent scent unfolded for him like the rarest flower.

That lavender oil and clary sage essence of her fragrance. He likes her eyes. So shy and soft. Grey like Howlite.

People say they couldn’t see beauty in pale eyes but he very much disagrees. Pale. Like the pearled moon, like clouded open skies. Like the gentle purity of creamy rose petals.

That girl he glimpsed tonight was shades away from the shy creature he saw walking along a pale road. With a crease of concern on her brow.

Arms and hands aching with strain and numb from her labours and holding that basket.

Even in her ill fitting coat and her cracked shoes and worn dress he’d seen more of _her_. More of her obvious true beauty.

Her hair this afternoon was riotous and wild and he _so_ likes wild things.

Tonight she’d been trussed up, and decorated and tamed in a flimsy silk gown and made to look like every other girl donned in their best. To parade in the ballroom like a swan showing off its feathers.

Or like a snowy little dove-

He smiles to himself. Time was - back in some far less strict age - he’d have cleverly concocted some excuse to get her alone at that ball tonight.

A darkened room for a lovers tryst. A room out of use and earshot of everyone where he could be her lover just for the night. Where he could kiss her senseless. Sate the craving.

Crowd her to the wall of some parlour, tear those silly slippers off. Rip those papery silk skirts right up the middle. Make her cry out in pleasure on his cock. Make her thighs shake with rapture that makes her sweet core drip right down to the insides of her stockinged knees.

He’d feed on her too. Oh, he’d make a feast of her. Make her _last._

The little delicate morsel she was. What a mouthful. He’d mouth everywhere. Her gorgeous breasts, her neck, devour between her thighs at a place where he’s certain no other man has ever been.

Shove his muzzle in her neck and lick the sweat off her soaped salt skin. Taste that awful cloying fragrance she put on. Growl at her that she should never bother with scent again to entice him. He didn’t want the citrus rot of perfumery and flowers.

He wanted her. Her bare skin. He wanted the clean pure innocence he smelt off her from his carriage that afternoon. Her skin. Body. Her unguarded neck.

He’d bite and suck and feed. He’d feed as they are joined as one with him slipped up inside her. And he’d happily watch that white white dress turn crimson garnet.

He damns civility. He growls and tears the infernal cravat right off his neck. Not only is he raging hungry, but he’s now got an appetite for things that just blood won’t sate.

His appetites for Miss Ashton.  
  


He balls up the cloth of his cravat and shoves his deep in his coat pocket. His shirt neck now gapes wide open. Down is pecs. Almost to his chest. Baring him to the cold that he’s too deadened and numb to feel.

When the coach bumps over a rickety track in the road, he gazes out the window, feeling the chilled glass brush his icy hands. Even through his thick skinned leather gloves. Lined with silken rabbit fur. An irony when his hands were ones that didn’t even need keeping warm.

He peers out the tiny icy slither of the window pane in the door. See’s that they are now heading through some tiny hamlet. One far from home. Somewhere quiet where there’s a quaint roadside tavern under the heavy bruising of a night sky.

A run down roadside coaching inn by the looks of the squat old building wedged into the earth, compressed under a heavy blanketing snow. The roof sags in the middle. There’s tiles missing. A wonky chimney which coughs and chokes out little smoke.

The crusty paint peeling sign above the door announces it’s called ‘The Horse & Wagon’ In faded wheat gold paint. He sees the small square spits of Tudor windows to the front are glowing with candles and many men are crushed within. Drinking away their riches. Or drowning their sorrows. Escaping their nagging wives or their crying children. Getting away from the responsibility of all the hungry mouths they had to feed.

He pounds a big rattling fist once on the carriage roof. Careful not to plough his ravened fist through the wood. He could tear it apart like brittle match wood if he wanted.

The coach shudders, whip cracks, horses whinny and snort in protest. Kylo wets his lips and climbs out down the coach.

“Going in for a drink. Don’t wait on me.” He instructs. His driver tips his hat and the carriage churns up wet and muddy snow as it lurches away.

He strides to the warped door and shoves it open. Creaky and shuddering old thing. The aroma of the dingy place hits him like being cut down by stampeding stallion.

The decay of sweat. The heat and filth of working men. Body odours. Stale ale and musty unclean floors.

His heavy treads from his expensive boots skid on the muck lining the grey flagstones as he steps in. As tall as the door, and more so, he had to stoop to get in. His shoulders too wide for the tiny door.

The bar is crowded with labourers and farm hands. They have their backs turned to him. But the miserable portly barman assesses Kylo with offence and derision as he comes in. With his probable educated accent and his fine clothes.

This was normal men’s refuge from their masters or the fine men and lords they serve. The scowl on the tubby mans face tells kylo this.

In a previous life, any man looking with such open derision at his lord and master rightfully entitled them to be pilloried for a month, or flogged until he can’t stand, Kylo thinks.

He looks around the dismal offering of this atmosphere. Settles on a table in the mouldy walled corner. Damp dripping from the sagging ceiling over the exposed stone.

The tables are wonky chunky oak ones. The only light in the place are from melted and misshapen candles in brass black stands on each uncleaned table. Kylo sits with a full vantage of the bar. Next to the fireplace. Soot and ash spewed all over the floor. Crunching and crushed under his boots.

A waify little barmaid appears in a dirty donkey-brown wool dress. Her hair the shade of red rust scraped back off her face in a low bun. Stained chemise under her rumpled dress.

She still had the flush of youth in her cheeks. The baby-weight of it on her face too. She was still a girl and yet she had to work serving the foul pigs in here. He pities the poor thing. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. And he knew men lost to drink could turn truly vile.

“Serve the gentleman, Maggie.” The miserable barkeep growls. She does as she’s bid. The way he says ‘gentleman’ was as if the word turns his stomach.

Kylo’s sat in shadow in his corner. Fully confident the girl can’t see him. Doubtless she’s had to approach more rowdy awful men than him. She doesn’t seem scared. Why should she be? She doesn’t know she’s approaching a man who’s scarier than all the rowdy and randy drunk men she’s seen, put together.

She focuses her innocent little brown eyes at him. He sees the flush on her cheeks. And the dew of labour on her chest. There were splashes of drink sullying her crumpled linen chemise sleeves. She’s soaked in sweat and smells of drink and dirt. “What can I get you, sir?” She asks. Her accent was low born.

“Ale.” Kylo asks for. All the alcohol this place would serve is spirits or beer. No cordials, port or madeira to be found in here. This isn’t the place for that. This is the place to get drunk quick - _he hopes._

She nods and scampers back over to the bar. She brings him back a filthy tankard of ale that he doesn’t even dare touch.

He reaches his pocket and gives her two silver shillings. She turns away but he stops her by grabbing her wrist. Bones grate under his leather palm. Turning back she looks afraid.

“Please, sir-“ She tries to protest.

Kylo reaches out again and puts three crown coins in her hand. She looks at him with surprised wet eyes. Bordering on offence at his insinuation. This was an inn. There were rooms upstairs- she thought he wished to buy her time.

“Nothing like that.” Kylo assures her with a cross frown. He prefers his partners willing. Not paid.

“That’s for you and your family.” He nods to the bar. “ _Not_ for him.” He states firmly.

She smiles and quickly pockets the coins. He likes travelling with coins in his coat. Knowing what he could idly spare to a deserving soul could feed a family in reduced circumstances, for an entire week.

She walks away happily from his table. He slouches back in the shadows again.

He lets the fetid ale sit in front of him and suffers this putrid place so that his dinner might show itself soon.

He listens to the men cackle, hacking booming laughs, share stories and jokes, and drink and stoutly ignore him. Which is what he wanted. He planned for that. It always serves him and his appetite well.

He waits and watches. As any good hunter does. And he’s one of the top predators stalking this earth-

He was the second vampire ever made. The only devil worse than him is the one who made him. And the only one Kylo’s maker bows down to, is the original demon himself who bought them all into creation. The one who fell from heaven.

He continues his waiting game.

Eyes slipping over every man. Watching them imbibe. Watching the sense drain from their thick heads. Watching. Looking. Searching. Wondering who who who it will be.

He doesn’t have to prey for very long. He never had to in filthy, discarded and squalid places like these.

Kylo’s eyes zip to the bar where some letching man now has his hands tugging at the bar maids skirts and trying to get her in his lap.

The assailant was young. Not very handsome. Ruddy faced. Tanned. A farm hand at his best guess. Broad backed with a square jaw and wheaten hair. Kylo leans forwards in his chair. Eyes churning. Stomach calling.

She wrenches her skirts away from him and gives him a stout slap across the face. Before scurrying away scared, heading out the door at the back to fetch the things her boss barked at for her to go get.

His friends all jeered and laughed and told him he got what was owing to him. A red welt spreading across his face.

Kylo’s stomach knots up in anticipation.

The affronted farm hand sloshes down his pint. And starts after the girls retreat. Kylo slips out the front door with a smirk. And a belly full of rage.

His feet crunch on the snow. Where he stands. He rips his gloves off and shoves them in his pocket. He’s a feeling he’ll need his bare hands soon. Nails already growing sharper. The promise of a hunt hangs in the air. 

He slips around the side of the tavern. To the ale barrel store out back. He’s nearly there to the out sheds when he hears it. The crack of a slap harshly ringing the air, whimpers. Gasps of pain. Pairs of feet shifting in the snow.

He rounds the corner. Silent as his shadow trailing behind him.

He sees the farm hand with his hand over the girls mouth. Crushing her to the tavern wall by the back door. Hidden by the barrels, boxes and crates stacked all around. He’s trying to stuff his hand up her skirts again.

“Give us a kiss, lass. _You know_ you want to-“ He smirks.

Hunched over the poor girl. Leering at her. Snarling that no one makes a fool out of him. Her eyes are so wide and terrified. Whites of them and sticky in the dark night air, like pearls.

Kylo can’t stop the low growl slipping from his throat. The natural part of him- the animal- slipping free.

He marches over with his blood raging fury through his body. Temples pulsing with strain and need. He fists a hand in the boys collar and yanks him back, slamming him up into the wall instead. See how he likes it.

He holds with death. He doesn’t hold with rape.

Not in any sense. Not to young girls with their whole lives ahead. He was born and bred in a time when women were revered as highly as men. They were treated and respected as equal. Not handled and oppressed, bred and showcased and sold like livestock.

He turns the letch to face him. Marvels in the scared screams that come from his mouth. He likes hearing how horrible he is in his most feral state.

His eyes are glowing gold now. Golder than coin. Golder than sun and wheat and everything precious.

Only he looks terrifying. Gold eyes. Edges rimmed with raw red.

The girl cowers on the snowy floor next to them. Tears streaming down her innocence puppyish face. One cheek reddened by a slap from a harsh hand. Kylo looks down at her. The farm hands feet dangled high off the floor, kicking at him.

“Run along girl. Go home.” Kylo warns. Looking down at her. She scrambled back and heaved herself up to stand on shaking legs. 

“W-What are you gonna do with him?” She asks. Edging away down the wall.

“You don’t wish to know.” Kylo smiles squeezes the guys throat. Spit splutters out his mouth. He gurgles on his shouts of terror.

She scarpers away in the snow. It clings powdery wet to her skirts and she run’s around the building and off into the dark. He’s not worried for her safety now. She won’t encounter a more dangerous creature than him out there tonight.

The man before him whimpers. Kylo rakes his eyes over his face. Rubs his thumb along the pulsing jugular in his neck. His sharp nails quickly piercing the skin. Notes of hot sweet copper and pennies bloom up in the air.

“Please. D-Don’t hurt me _please-please_ sir.” He begs.

Why do people think begging will save them? Like any amount simple pleading will keep them from harm. It won’t even scratch the surface.

“I’m giving you a little taste of how scared that girl was when you followed her out here. Not very palatable is it? You beat her with your bare hands. You caused her pain. She suffered you. Now you’ll suffer me...”

“And I will make sure, it, _hurts_.” Kylo’s promising with mirth in a savage whisper.

When he smiles there are two glimmering sharp fangs where his pointed canines used to sit. Gleaming wet in the light. The farm hands eyes are shrieking with fear.

Kylo strikes quickly and cleanly. Hands fisted into this grubby workers clothes. He growls as his teeth sink and he tears through the flesh like the skin is no more to him than wet paper being gouged at by knives.

He groans as he drinks. Laps it down. As the hot viscous filled his mouth and slid warm down his throat to his belly like a trail of fire.

His blood tasted of apples and coins. Sharp and bronzy bitter.

Kylo can feel it smeared over his mouth. Slipping down his chin. Onto his chest and staining his open shirt. He’s crushing the man’s windpipe in his free hand. The other planted to the wall. He feels the wretch twitch and sag under his hands as he slowly eats away his life.

The part he always likes the best- when the fight drains away and the muscles loosen. And everything unwinds. That’s when the blood comes quicker. Thicker. Less of it being pumped around a panicked body.

There’s no panic anymore. There’s nothing. Not even life.

He greedy with meals. He drinks until he’s had his fill and his appetite is about as large as his body.

He feasts until blood is staining his hands. His chest. And smudged all across his chin. He even saw some drop on his boots. His teeth are stained crimson and his belly heavy with the bliss of being so full. He hadn’t fed since he arrived here. It’s nectar euphoria flushing into his blood.

When he’s had enough. He easily drags the bloodless corpse away from the tavern.

Discards his useless body in a nearby icy ditch at the side of the road. He reeked of Gin. And Kylo thinks it a fitting end that it looks like the drunkard stumbled into the path of an oncoming carriage and got torn and crushed to bits under the wheels.

He kicks snow over him and leaves. Sucking the blood off his fingers as he walks.

He’s not sure how or why. But he finds himself knowing to head through the woods. The opposite route to home. Trekking through snow in his leather boots. Forest and ice brushing at his wool jacket shoulders from the low hanging branches in the trees. Wisps of snow land in his hair. Floating all around and catching on every gnarled bark of each tree.

He finds he ends up in the oddest of places. Westwell manor.

He looks up at the large block of the Manor house. Gold brick. White sash windows. An ivy smothered roof. Cracked roof tiles that had seen better days, freckled in melting snow and moonlight. Just like the snowy gardens.

He stands shaded under the old horse chestnut tree, and looks up to the one room, high up in the house. In the middle. There’s a candle glowing amber in the window. Turning the glass into a sheet of apricot cornelian standing stark in the bruised black night.

He just wants a glimpse. He’s aching for it- he thought it was the bloodlust that pulled here. But perhaps he’s wrong- it’s deeper than all that feral nature.

Just a glance. Just the _one_. Can’t hurt. It’ll help him make up his mind

And there’s his little dove. Draped in a white nightgown. Sat in her window alcove.

Up against the frosty glass with a shawl bundled around her shoulders. A novel cracked open and sloped in her lap. Her delicate face exposed by her hair. Now in that messy, freed arrangement. Tucked into a wild plait tied with beige muslin at the end. The nightgown it so big it slides off one pale shoulder.

Kylo aches at the sight. His bones ring with wanting. Maybe this power is no more than desire.

He shuts his eyes and he can smell her. Can imagine the simple taste of her hot skin on his tongue. Wants to feel his eyelashes kiss the crook of her neck as he does the same to her shoulder. Wants the drum of that pulse in his mouth. Is this desire? Or is it more?

She turns the page and smiles a little reading the passage. He smiles too. As if they are linked. Already joined as one. It makes him feel something stir.

He softly whispers words that echo out into the frigid cold night. So only he can hear them “Sweet dreams, little dove.”

Kylo’s not felt like this, or this strange pull of attraction in all his 1,027 years walking this earth. And now it’s here, she’s here-

He wonders- 

Maybe she doesn’t know it yet- he doesn’t fully know or understand it himself. They shared something like a deep connection as soon as their eyes met. He felt it. And he never usually feels things such as those. Not for another human.

Kylo is in serious danger of outstaying his welcome- but he just wants to look at her. To admire her for a second longer. As openly as an astrologist studies the beauty and wonder of the moon. Perhaps he can make sense of all this.

As Iris moves to close her book, blow out her candle and climb into her much cosier bed to warm her feet; she glances out the gardens, up past the pond and up at the bright cyclops of that pearly winter moon. 

  
She could’ve sworn she caught sight of a hulking man stood, looking up at her from under the chestnut tree. She blinks and rubs away the cold fog smeared on her window and there’s nothing there- idle trickery from her tired mind.   
  
  


He vows he will see her again; he’ll make sure if it. As he walks home in the cold night. Dripping dried blood and agitated with desire. He declares to himself that he will do everything in his power to uncover more. To make something sensible out of all this mess.

After all. Kylo Ren is a creature of little patience. But this feeling, this situation. That is what he will patiently unpick. 

  
~


	4. Acquaintances

The sky remained hard. Resolutely letting snow sift from the thick great heavens, like icing sugar drifting down. The ground also continued to be frosty hard and scattered with patches of hidden silvery ice.

No sooner than the sun had risen over the tumbling flat frosty vista of Hampshire hills and frost crusted meadows, than Iris is up, and going about her daily chores all in the life of a gently bred - yet unwed- daughter, of fairly considerable means.

She takes food parcels to the poor. Calls on sick relatives or companions for tea. Pays calls. Fetched supplies for cook from the butchers or the grocers, or the fishmongers in town.

When one of the maids is ill, or is suffering a passing heartbreak until the next suitor comes along, Iris is the one to step into the void and fulfil their tasks. She collects the eggs from the chickens at the farm, or makes the ailing girl a hot milk posset or a cup of hot chocolate to cheer them.

It seemed like every other week their maids, Meg and Julia, seemed to go getting their hearts broken. Some farm hand. Or the boy from the butchers shop. The milliners son, or the strong handsome one who works in the drapers shop. As ever; Iris steps into the fray when - another - devastating crisis comes their way. She helps cook in the kitchen with supper. Or she helps out with idle cleaning around the house. Or see’s to the chores on the farm.

This morning is no different. Meg took to her bed with an ailing heart of the most acute kind. For the boy she fancies had become engaged to another girl. Iris brings her a cup of chocolate after breakfast and lends her a handkerchief and a shoulder so she can have a good long cry about it.

So household tasks fall onto her today. Fetching in what cook needed from market for supper. Even though she’d have liked to have spent a morning reading her book, or helping Julia get on top of the household washing. She’s wanted to take down the parlour curtains and give them a good scrub, for weeks now.

Or today she had ideally wanted to lend Flora and Posy a hand in drying some flowers, and french lavender and roses. For perfumes and bathing oils. They had to use their home grown stock from the gardens carefully. It was a long winter. And the convenience of summer blooms are far off yet. Dried flowers cost a pretty penny up the market.

Her duties are endless. She’s got calls to pay. Off to the butchers to buy sweet meats and game for the jugged hare cook is making tonight. She needs to buy beeswax candles and salt, and some more soaps.

And Posy and Flora are allowed to purchase two new ribbons each. They’ll walk into the village with her. No doubt nattering all the way there about what colours they want. And all the way back that they should’ve chosen different ones.

Iris steps outside in her wintry best and her cracked leather boots. Two pairs of wool stockings this time. Her navy blue wool pelisse over a thick white cotton dress. For good measure, she puts a bonnet on to keep her ears warm, and wraps a gold embroidered shawl around her shoulders.

Posy and Flora are trussed up as if they’re off to go personally meet the Prince Regent. Flora is in her gold pelisse with her pink dress under. And Posy had her powder blue coat over her mint green dress. They’re both wearing bonnets that they made up themselves. Their hats staggering under the weight of ribbons and cloth and trims and flounces.

Iris’s was far simpler - No fuss. No trims. A gold straw bonnet with grey ribbon tied under her chin.

Iris has to chide Posy, when they step out of doors, for forgetting to wear her gloves. She insists she hasn’t a decent pair and slips back into the house to go up to Iris’s room to conveniently borrow her grey rabbit fur lined gloves. Making her elder sister roll her eyes. The plot was clear.

They had a heavy basket each to carry. Some old granary loaves, soused herring, and some jars of Jam from their kitchens to go to the poor. They’re not even at the end of the drive and Flora is whinging about the weight of her basket. Iris heaves a sigh and grabs it off her.

She trudges behind them. Both arms carrying heavy baskets.

Her and Posy link arms, giggling, walking along merrily, animated and discussing last nights ball. Or, more accurately; making sport of the people who’d attended.

“Did you see that _awful_ Lavender gown Jane Penwell had on?”

“I thought it suited her very ill indeed.”

“And did you hear about Lawrence Fisher? Apparently he’s now to be courting Lucy Miller.”

“I cannot stand her. Last night she was so boastful about the lace trim on her dress. She’s vile. And I haven’t had any new lace on my dress for over a year! Not since last summer. I’m sure she does it deliberately, just to vex me.”

“You are far prettier than Lucy Miller. She has ten million freckles and no conversation at all. She’s a pale ugly little thing.” Posy’s insisting fiercely to her younger sister.

Iris is amused by the sheer frailty of their worries.

“And besides, Mama said she had a letter from Mrs Thornby today, and apparently Lord Ren and Iris were the talk of the ball all night, last eve.” Flora says cheekily.

Turning over her shoulder to scrutinise her sister with a smug grin that flashes her straight little row of teeth.

Iris rolled her eyes. Strongly suspecting that as of now, her and Lord Ren would be gossiped about in front parlours for weeks. This was a sleepy country village with little amusement and not much variety to sustain it.

Mama’s and girls of the Ton would fall on the new shred of tittle-tattle like wolves.

“He left the ball last night without talking to any other girl, mama said.” Posy explains.

“The poor man probably didn’t have time enough to get through all the desperate Hampshire girls, eagerly throwing themselves at him to make an acquaintance.” Iris thinks aloud.

They walk up Westwell’s frosted drive and out onto the snowy lanes that cut through quaint countryside and woods.

The golden sun is in its early rising, striping ribbons of thick satin gold through the trees. The ruddy browns and ash greys and ochre coppery rusts of the Turner-esque English countryside. Of fields and hedgerows and treetops. The grass is no longer green. It’s a musty white. And that same cloying powder clings onto the dead taupe leaves and branches of every tree. The air is bitter to breathe in.

Iris takes a deep lungful of it, and its like a chest full of sharp pins. Needling at her lips and her neck. She should’ve thought to employ a wool scarf. As it is she can only tuck her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Tucking the heavy baskets into to dig deeper into her elbows. The frost numbs her feet, and sneaks up her skirts and snatched cruelly at her legs.

She clenched her numb fingers, scrunching and unscrunching them up in her much too thin gloves.

Posy and Flora continue their giggling and swapping tidbits of gossip about Lord Ren.

“You know he didn’t even dance with anyone!”

“A great sin, I’m sure. Punishable by death.” Iris thinks to herself under her breath.

“He probably didn’t have time-“ Posy remarks.

“Or he doesn’t know how.” Flora supposed.

“A man that lofty, of course he can dance. Maybe he prefers not too.”

“Maybe he has a false leg, or, or a war wound!”

Iris rather wishes her ears were purely ornamental by this point.

_Give me a pair of vestigial ears anytime you wish._ She idly prays. Turning her eyes skywards.

“Maybe he’s shy-“ Flora squeaks. Posy clasps her hand over her mouth and laughs so loudly it startles the chaffinches out the trees.

“I don’t think he can afford to blend into the wallpaper with a stature like that.” Flora grins.

“His shoulders were twice the width of me.” Posy says dreamily.

“Did he have soft lips Iris? For you must’ve felt them through your gloves... Were they heavenly?” Flora demands to know. Both sisters walking in step alongside her now.

She side eyes them. “That is not a proper thing to discuss. And well you know it Flora Jane Ashton.” Iris insists. Concealing her secrets to herself.

She wasn’t telling her sisters how her whole body burst into shivers popping and skipping up her spine. How his touch made her skin feel like it was dancing of its own accord. Free from her body. She shivered yet she was blushing hot.

His lips were _the_ softest, sweetest things that had ever come into contact with her body.

Her whole arm felt dizzy afterwards. It wasn’t possible. But that’s how it felt. Hours after she was still rubbing the patch where his lips had lain on her satin gloves.

When she got home after the ball, she peeled her glove off and looked at her hand.

It still looked ordinary. Her skin wasn’t red or marked - but it felt like it should be. It felt as if something utterly astounding had happened to her.

The memory of his eyes gazing their arrow-striking glare into her own haunted her head all night long. Swam behind her closed eyelids in her sleep. Those opulent piercing eyes.

“We won’t tell a soul.” Posy promises

“ _Oh_ , look. Here is the Barton’s cottage. Flora pass me the ointment for Mr Barton.” Iris demands.

Seeing the little boxy cottage coming into view. Roof thick with iced thatch. Walls butter yellow. With fat pink sickly rose vines creeping up the walls. Iris sees the chimney is smoking. They must be home keeping warm on this frigid morning. Acrid woodsmoke from the house drifts across the woods.

They deliver the ointment into Mrs Barton’s hand. Along with some jam, a loaf, and pickled goods to see them through the wintry cold week. They were a frail elderly couple after all. And Iris likes helping people. She always had. Her mother always insisted she’d been cursed with an unshakable vein of kindness.

Which often meant as a child she was forever taking in birds wounded falling out their nests in the gardens. Leaving carrots out for the wild rabbits. Seeds for the birds. Feed for the little monk-jack deers. She shared all her dolls as a girl. Forever saw to caring for the people and creatures which surround her. She visits the infirm with medicine. Reads to the lonely old matrons who’d lost all the grandchildren of their own.

Now she’s grown that inclination hasn’t left her. She likes making sure none of the infirm elderly, or the more impoverished friends of her acquaintance suffer through the bitter cold climes. They never have to struggle alone. Iris is a balm to the hurting. She gives what she can. And is a friend to everyone kind enough to recognise it.

Before long, the trio of ladies dispense their generosity upon those who need it. Giving what sustenance and leftovers they can spare. It’s not much really- when all is said and done. But it’s helping in any little way possible. And that’s what matters.

They come eventually into Pembleton high street. The every busy and jagged row of higgledy Tudor houses. Separated by a lane of sticky brown mud where horses hooves and carts churn up the dirt. Carts and stalls line the streets. Modest shopfronts sell their wares. The air is full up of woodsmoke and the scent of roasting nuts from the brazier on the stand nearby.

Iris loses Posy and Flora very quickly to the haberdashers, where the ribbons hang from great silken trails in racks from the ceiling. Every colour Imaginable.

She sees them fussing over Belgian lace and leaves them be. She steps into the butchers for Cooks desired hare and sweet meats. She buys the candles, salt and the paper wrapped little cakes of soaps from Mr Milton’s shop next door.

She crosses the street to the grocers. Fills her basket with green leeks, onions, potatoes and carrots. She tucks everything in her basket, around the poor lamented hare with its fur still on, and covers it with a patterned linen cloth.

She has a shilling spare- she wanders over to Mr. Greeley. The proud proprietor of the roasted nuts stall. She buys a bag of warm, buttery sweet chestnuts.

Hides them from Posy and Flora. This was her one little indulgence for today. She sneaks one of the hot things onto her tongue and savours it.

She strides back up the line of shop windows. Looking and listening to the clack and bustle of the street behind her. Clopping hooves, rattling carts, ponies and traps clunking along the high street. Friends and acquaintances stopped to gossip and chat in the street. Young and old. Of every walk of life.

She looks in the drapers window. The reflection off the glass, showed her a watery image of a gaggle of matronly mamas stood behind her across the street, loudly gossiping in her direction. Pointing and gesturing toward her.

She rolls her eyes in huffing annoyance.

She wasn’t enjoying being the inconstant centre of attention. Open to such censure and fascination in odes to the Hearst’s ball last night.

Also in odes to the mysterious new stranger to these shores, too. The dark, dashing, and taciturn Lord Ren.

Every wet-behind-the-ears girl in all of Hampshire was busy envisioning their swirled initials joined with his in their embroidery. A big handsome stranger from far off lands. It was the precursor to the stuff of romance from drippy novels. A harbinger of a great love story.

Maybe not hers. Lord Ren may have kissed her hand and called her handsome. But so have countless other rich suitors, and then two months later them and their pretty blonde heiress of ten thousand pounds, are lavishly married and installed in a house in Brunswick square. She’s sure he’ll eventually find some far more moneyed girl to march into matrimony.

It won’t be her- not her turn to pick out her wedding clothes. It never is.

She lets the whispers and doubts about her, flourish from unimportant mouths.

She never cared for the savagery of society. She won’t start being missish about it all, now. It won’t serve her any purpose-

She can only hope the next scandal or engagement or elopement, or any other source of fascination to the bored inhabitants of this county, comes flooding in quick to snatch away all unhealthy - and rather undue - interest in her.

She waits outside the haberdashers for her pair of silly sisters. They eventually come out. Comparing their new ribbons with each other’s. Flora has a pink, Posy has some frothy white lace.

Posy hands Iris a teal silk ribbon. “For your hair. It would become you so well. _And_ it will go with your eyes.” She insists.

Iris smiles. Wrapping the long length of satin around her grey glove. It was very pretty.

“Pray how did you afford this?” Iris narrows her eyes in smiling suspicion at the pair of them.

“I saved up my allowance.” Posy insists plainly. Iris continues her look. She tilts her chin down a notch. Let’s her eyes harden to steel. Arched her muddy shaped brows.

“...And the haberdasher’s son is _so_ very obliging.” Flora beams. The younger Ashton’s giggle together knowingly.

Iris sighs again. Strongly suspecting she could safely boast that she had two of the silliest siblings in the entire country. _Hell_ , in the entire British Empire.

“Let’s take our leave shall we...” Iris says. Slowly heading away. Down the street in the opposite direction they came. It took them home down on the woodland path.

She picks up her pristine white skirts and steps over the mud. Baskets heavy with her goods now thunking against her hip as they walk. One filled with meat. The other with candles and potatoes and other luxuries for supper.

Posy and Flora trail behind her. Discussing how best to use their ribbons. On bonnets or around the waistline of their favourite dresses. Iris drowns them out and listens to the crunch of her feet on the frost. The silver wisp of her breath as its whisked away up into the reach of the sky. She likes how sun glimmers off frost like sparkles and diamonds and gems. Like something fine and rich.

They just come across a curve in the lane. Leading through an open meadow full of frosted grass and withered wildflowers. When a thundering sound gallops into being, hitting the hard ground in succession from beyond the bend.

Iris looks up, attention captured swiftly by the beast of a large rider atop a colossal shimmering black horse, moving quick towards where they are walking along the quiet little lane. The peace shattered by the horses hooves pounding the earth.

A great hulking beast of a man sits astride it. Who indeed almost matches the brutally-enormous muscled intensity of the creature he rides.

Lord Ren.

Iris startled and went to move aside. But he sees them and is already slowing the horse. She draws a deep breath and watches as he tugs the reins to reel in his galloping mount. Reducing to a canter, a trot and then to a slow stop. Hooves churning up frost and spitting wet and crushed muddy grass, under its enormous stomping treads.

The sun in fiercely shining behind him. So Iris can only make out the silhouette at first. There’s no mistaking that singular body for another man. The primal size and bulk of him is unmistakable.

But then he shifts forwards on his horse as it stops. Lumbering towards them all. And that winter sun shines amber over his shoulder and she’s met with the full face of the handsome man she became acquainted with yesterday. His breath and that of his horses turn to silver smoke in the cold air

He passes the strops of its black reins into one gloved leather hand. His attire not much changed since yesterday. Still all black. The shining calf riding boots. The breeches that sit entirely too snug to the sturdy trunks of his legs and hips. The tailored black wool coat. White shirt tied with an elaborately knotted wine coloured cravat. Diamond pin studded central into the tie of the cloth.

His hair is free and rumpled by the wind. Desirable and untamed. _Wild_. He wears no top hat on his head like most gentlemen of civility did, when out riding.

Something about that lack of full dress she admires. Maybe he likes to feel the wind tangle his hair. The suns kiss his pale skin. The wind stinging at his cheeks. Likes galloping across the terrain at full speed on his mammoth sized beast of a horse.

“Good morning ladies.” He nods to them all. Still seated on his horse.

“Miss Ashton.” He smiles directly down at Iris as his horse shifts and stomps and nibbles the dewy wet grass below.

She ducks her head and curtseys. “Good morning. Your Lordship.” She says politely. Dwarfed by his horses shadow.

He holds her gaze for a second and smiles. Eyes more opulent charcoal in their shade than ever, this morning. He even had a kiss of pink colour in his cheeks. He looks healthy. Less alabaster pale. She strongly suspects its because of the icy wind stinging his cheeks as he rode.

He unlatched his right boot from the stirrup and smoothly swings himself off the horse. Grips the pommel at the front of the black saddle and swings himself down. Feet land to earth with a crunching thud. Frost and grass crushed underfoot.

His long wool riding coat flaps at his knees. Billowing open at his chest to show just his white shirt beneath it. Such thin layers. He must’ve been freezing.

“If I may be so bold, Miss Ashton, allow me to see you along to your intended destination?” He asks kindly. One big hand patting the solid flank of his horses shoulder when it huffs at his dismounting.

Iris’s cheeks go flaming red. She’s sure of it. Throat dry she manages to answer.

“Oh. Forgive my impertinence Lord Ren. But I don’t wish to take you out of your way. Only we are heading in the opposite direction to your path.”

“With your permission. I should like to walk with you. I’ve done a sufficient amount of riding for this morning.” He tells her.

Iris smiles. Flattered that he’d rearrange his ride, just to see her safely home. Just to walk with her for a moment or two.

Posy digs a sharp elbow into Flora’s ribs. Which jolts the youngest into speaking. “Iris. We were just going up the lane here to call on Charlotte Morris.”

Iris gazes pointedly at Flora with a piercing state that could’ve rivalled a dressmakers needle. “How remiss of you not to bring it up until now...” Iris glares a little.

“Should you mind?” Posy asks. Fluttering her lashes.

“Of course not.” Iris says flatly. “Mind the hour home and do for heavens sake be sensible.”

“We are the very vision of sensibility.” Flora beams.

Iris quirks a wry brow at the both of them. Teeth grit.

The two most transparent pests on the planet. Their plot was clear as day- One of sneaking away and leaving their elder sister unchaperoned and alone with him.

They turn away giggling and make for the little lane opposite. Gabbling and whispering all the way. Loud giggles follow them like fluttering birdsong.

When she turns back to Lord Ren he looks slightly amused. She blushes.

“I feel I ought offer an apology, your lordship. They are- most puerile and trying at times.” Iris offers as she shifts to step nearer to where he is.

He smiles gently. “They are young girls who fancy themselves cunning, I wager. No apology is necessary for that.” He declares affably. Patting his horses neck.

He brings the big horse around. Holding the gathered reins in his left hand. He leads his gigantic horse around with a click of his tongue and some soft words in urging Bavarian. The big creature follows his lead. She moves and alters the heavy baskets on her arms.

He sees this. Kylo frowns at the heavy weights at both her elbows. She shouldn’t be tasked with fetching and carrying like a damned pack horse. He extends a hand. “Allow me, Miss Ashton.”

“Oh, no it’s- I couldn’t.” By the time her protestations die on her lips. He has one basket in one hand, the other, he tied the handle to a saddle bag strap on his horse. Lays it rest against the saddle.

She’s mortified that a Lord offers to carry her basket for her.

“That’s truly a magnificent horse. I’ve never seen the like before.” She says. The steeds eyes glitter as if it knows it’s being discussed. “What’s his name?” She asks rummaging in her basket he holds. Hand slipped under the cloth.

“Erland.” Kylo says. The horses ears twitch.

“Erland. A majestic name. For a majestic beast.” She smiles at him.

She steps up to the horse and strokes her gloved hand down the flat bone between his eyes, leading down to his snout. Scents of hay and oats and animal sweat pour musky off his coat.

“He’s a lovely animal.” She says. Stroking his solid flank.

“Percheron. He’s a French draft horse. His breed originated in the Huisne valley in western France.” Lord Ren tells her.

“Bred for use as war horses, and pulling stagecoaches. This one has a fair mount of Arabian blood in him too. Makes him far too proud and headstrong.” He announces. Erland flicks his swishing tail at his owner. Snorting at him.

“I bought him with me from Bavaria. He’s the best riding horse I’ve had for a while. Stubborn temperament.” He offers. He watches her stroke his head. Touch the soft spot behind his ears.

“You like animals, Miss Ashton.” He states.

Most girls, as far as he’s aware, deigned horses as smelly, ugly creatures, whose only purpose was beneath them. Or to pull their carriages. She seemed to like this big equine creature very much.

“I do. Especially ones who are as beautiful as him.”

“Careful. Or else that flattery will shoot right to his ego.” He warns lightly.

She smiles.

Erland’s hairy velveteen muzzle cheekily nudges at her shoulder for more affection. He clearly likes her touch. Kylo tugs on his reins and frowns at him.

“Benehmen Sie sich.” Kylo rumbles in a firm Bavarian command at his horse. Calling him back. Telling him to be good. Rubbing his stocky shoulder. The round strong bones of him and the hot silk of his coat underneath his gloved palm.

She smiles. Lets the carrot she fetched from her basket, sit in the flat cradle of her gloved palm. She offers it to Erland, who snuffles it up and crunches on it. Breaking the frail vegetables skin with his big teeth. Munching it all down. Nuzzles her for more when he’s done.

He snorts when Kylo speaks up. “Anymore and you’ll get fat. You great beast.” He assures his horse in that soft foreign dialect. Shoving his snout into Miss Ashton’s hand for yet more treats. Erland’s head was so big and his power so strong, he could’ve very realistically knocked her over with one push.

She steps back and takes her place alongside a Lord Ren so they can continue in their walk. He’s a busy man. She doesn’t wish to hold him up. They fall into step easy. Her on Kylo’s left, Erland in his big lumbering enormity on Kylo’s right. His master has his right hand holding his stallions reins. The other easily carries her basket for her.

“Did you enjoy your introduction into Hampshire society, Your lordship?” Iris can’t help but ask him with mirth creeping into her voice and on her smile.

He turns his head to look at her. “The sheer amount of handsome and accomplished young ladies hereabouts is staggering.” He comments with dry humour. “I wonder if this isn’t the most accomplished county in all of England.” He states.

Iris finds herself smiling. Every desperate mother worth her salt last night would be crowing her daughters praise to high heaven. Enough to induce the possibility that her very accomplished, pretty and upstanding daughter might have a chance at landing him.

“Mothers can be so very domineering when the subject of marriage arises.” Iris promises. Looking down to step over a particularly frosty puddle.

Kylo looks across at her. Watches her profile. Along the curve of her nose and the swell of her smiling lips. It occurred to him then, that she didn’t know of her beauty. She was not aware of its potency. He could sense it; this was a girl who overlooked her own worth and highly underestimated her attractiveness.

With her pebble-ash eyes shining in the marigold sun like that, sparkling as if made of moonstone gems, and her rosy smile so unguarded and free. She didn’t see her beauty then. Not the way he could. Didn’t see it lay in the kiss of pink in her cheeks or the merriment of her face. On the geniality of her laugh and smiles.

“I know I shouldn’t comment on such things. But I do feel so dearly for every new suitor who comes to this village. Every Mama and every daughter must veritably drown poor men with their female offspring.”

Kylo raises one brow. “Rest assured. I’m not a man so inclined to favour polite safe conversation.” He promises her. He doesn’t tiptoe around propriety.

“And I will admit I lost count of the young ladies I was introduced too last eve. My ears were quite ringing with names and sickly smiles by the end of the evening.” He confesses.

She smiles wide again. Looks across. “I do sometimes wish that the people here could look beyond the scope of their own ignorance. To look beyond the defining goal of matrimony.” She confesses.

“Why should a woman’s worth be tied onto who she weds? Can she not be her own person and find a man to suit that.” She avows. Letting her stalwart brain run away with her rather passionate mouth.

“That’s very forward thinking of you.” Kylo says to her with a kind smile. Her face falls. She’s inspired insult with that comment.

She’s flushing with embarrassment.

“Mother would faint if she heard me confess that to you. Do forgive me, for the impertinence of my tongue.” She begs. Face wrinkling into a worried frown.

“You have a mind. Miss Ashton.” Kylo says. “It’s entitled to make itself known.”

“I’m a gently bred, unmarried, woman. And the eldest daughter, Lord Ren. My mind should be silent at all times. And possessed only, night and day, by thoughts and longing for matrimony.” She says. Quoting one of her mother’s rants.

“Well. You have my word. I’m most blessedly glad it’s _not_.” He says. Turning to look deep into her eyes.

She seems curiously confused. “You are?”

“Indeed.” He answers plainly.

“It means you are the one woman in this entire county with whom I can conduct a refreshing conversation. One that doesn’t revolve around reminding me again and again, that I’m a rich man who desperately needs a wife.” He offers.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Iris says laughing. “Not often I happen find someone on the same page as myself.”

“English men may find your so called ‘impertinence’ intolerable, Miss Ashton. For they were raised to know no better. But I am not a English man. Where I came from, it is applauded that a woman might speak her mind and have judgements and executions of her own.” He supplies.

“Our way of life here must seem so strange and strict to an outsider.” She dares. The defining pinnacle of English country society was its savage nature, after all.

“I don’t see much of the society in Bavaria.” He explains. “I see to the welfare of tenants on my land. I go hunting every season to pass the time. I’m afraid I rarely indulge in attending parties and balls.” He tells.

“A castle must be an incredible home.” She guesses.

“Even so- it can be very limiting being confined to it in the cold dark winters. Very little company. Little to entertain. I found myself wanting a change of scene. I had looked for some land opportunity’s to enclose in over here. When Hellford became available. It seemed a good opportunity to travel. Sink my teeth into a new venture.” He smarts. Eyes darkly roaming over her face with that handsome smile.

She nods. “I quite understand.” Erland clops alongside them in the misty morning sunshine. Snorting breaths silver and wispy still in the biting air.

“What are the winters like in Bavaria?” She enquires.

He smiles. “Beautiful. But bitter.” He explains. “The snow can be deep. As tall as me some days when it falls.” She smiles at his description.

“The castle stands out of a tall pine forest. A lake and a river to the east. One of the biggest woods in the country. Full of wolves, boars, and deer. It’s quite a wilderness in its own right.”

“Goodness- wolves. Isn’t that terribly dangerous?” She frets.

_Not as much as me_. He thinks. Matter of fact, when he steps foot in that forest, he is the most bloodthirsty dangerous animal in it.

“The beasts respect the boundary of my castle. I respect the forest is theirs. It’s a symbiotic relationship.” He tells her.

“Surrounded by wolves. You must feel very at home here too, then.” She jokes.

He laughs. “There’s something familiar I grant. Though the wolves back home don’t don lace caps and thrust all their daughters at me.”

She laughs at his remark. And suddenly, she goes spinning off course. Her worn boots slipping on a sneaky patch of frost and ice. No grip to their soles in this devilish cold. A yelp leaves her mouth as she skids. Blood flashing flushing hot and terrible suddenly. The shock of slipping stabbing at her stomach.

He acts quick. He lets go of Erland’s reins and steps that big form forwards and snatched one arm out to grab her. Slips back around her waist, cups the back of her hip, and yanks her tight to him to stop her falling.

She gasps and trembles as her vision spins, to be quickly halted by a sheer wall of cold, dark clad muscle. She barely registers where she is now.

Because she’s pressed right up into Lord Ren’s redoubtably firm chest. Her palms crushed flat on his lapels. His arm seizing her back and cupping her onto him to stop her slipping. She can feel under her coat how her breasts are crushed flat to him. Can feel his breathing heaving up and down, much like her own.

A shaky gasp leaves her mouth as she looks up, peering past the peak of her bonnet with flaming cheeks. Realising that they are slanted very close together. His face is right there, and he’s gazing down at her.

She’s in his arms. Buried into his chest. And it feels incredible. Such musculature and sheer masculine mass under her palms. Her head swims. He’s dizzying. Hypnotising.

Eyes as dark as burnt-ember molasses flecked with gold, and his lips look so invitingly pink ripe and soft- she curses at herself for that treacherous thought and her blush rises more. His wool coat and cologne nearly smacks her in the nose as she almost collided into his pectorals.

Kylo can hear her fluttering heartbeat. Like a racing preys pulse beating wild. Frail and fast, like a baby birds. A huge drift of her fragrance absolutely drowns him, pulls him under. Clary sage, French lavender and peppermint. Sweet and calming. _Addictive_. He wants to lean down and taste the salt of it off her neck...

It seems an eternity passes before he speaks.

“Are you hurt?” He asks. Making sure she didn’t turn one of her ankles. Or damage the bone

“T-Thankyou. I’m, I’m well.” She gasps. “I’m so sorry- I” She explains moving her hands down off his chest. He nearly swept her up off her feet. Now only her tiptoes brush the icy ground. The only part of her barely rooted to earth. Lost in those eyes.

Domineering, commanding, _brutal_ , eyes. Eyes that had seen this world ten times over. But never gazed upon anything comparable to her-

Erland brings them both back down to earth. Snorting and fussing. Swishing his tail and nudging his nose at his masters shoulder.

Sense swims back through the fog of attraction and the heady bloom of lust. Kylo unleashes her back and her hip from his hold.

Quite liking the feel of her he accidentally - and literally - caught underneath her coat. The plump of her thighs and the shapely flesh of her hip and her bottom. There’s doubtless a figure to rival Venus herself, under this shapeless coat and thin dress. She slowly drags her hands off his chest and steps back. Avoiding the ice beneath her toes. Her gloves rasp on his fine wool coat.   
  


“You fell. Miss Ashton. No need to be sorry for such a thing.” He tells her.

“You’ve a steady hand, Lord Ren.” She compliments. Thanking him further. He still held her basket in the arm that had not reached out to catch her. He looked as if he barely had to flex out an arm to catch her. Just twisted his body. His reflexes were sharp and cunning. As strong as he was.

He reached out and retook Erland’s reins.

They continue walking carefully along the little lane. For Westwell is just beyond the tree line now. It saddens her that she’ll be home soon.

Back to her daily chores. Back to scrubbing curtains, and helping cook roll pastry and mediating the silly shouting screeching arguments that Posy and Flora have over who gets to take turns to wear their favourite bonnet

She reflects how restoring it is to talk to someone so fully - without having to watch or guard her tongue. It’s even more enlightening to talk to someone such as him. Someone who, like her, feels like an outsider. Never fully fits in. And harbouring no desire too.

She feels her heart sink, morbid mournful and grey settling in her ribs, when they come to the meagre gateway along the short drive to Westwell. The twin stone pillars signifying the gateway were old and crusted with frosted moss.

Kylo calls Erland to halt. She pats the wonderful beasts strong shoulder in goodbye. He rubs the great velvet plain of black his forehead at her. Kylo untied her basket and handed it to her.

“I’d have no hesitation in seeing you to the door directly. But I fear your mother might see fault with our being left unchaperoned.” He disclosed. Giving her back the groaning full wicker basket with a clever grin.

She shivers when their hands brush. If she had any doubts in her attraction, that betraying little Judas of a tingle that thrashed her body, made her realise otherwise.

_She likes him-_

“Astute observation, your lordship. I Thankyou for your discretion.” She blushes. Hooking the baskets back on her arms. Adjusting the shawl where it had slipped down from her shoulders.

She looks down into her basket, and smiles. “A token of gratitude.” She explains before handing over the still warmed bag of chestnuts across to him.

He cradled them in his leather gloved hand. Appreciative of the gift. He rarely ate food. There wasn’t much need for it and it wasn’t the manna that’s sustained him. He had little joy in any human sustenance - apart from humans themselves.

When he did eat food, it was red meat that was still rare, juicy, and dripping blood. And he only drank sharp deep red wine.

He reaches over and took her hand. Once again dropping Erland’s reins. He took her dainty hand and brought it up and bows to kiss her palm.

He’s tired of satin and calfskin under his lips. He rather wanted to grasp a taste of her skin. _Soon_.

“Always a pleasure, Miss Ashton. I hope the experience of your company repeats itself shortly.” He compliments.

She smiles, apples of her cheeks creasing dimples with her widened smile. She nods politely and curtseys. “Your Lordship.” She curtseys gently. Bonnet tipping forwards. Criminally covering that beautiful face of hers.

She turns and he watches her walk up the pale lane to home. Sun striping through the trees onto her bleached linen white skirts. Bleached by sunshine. And softly scented of fresh cotton and French lavender.

Miss Ashton is made up of good intentions and possesses a giving heart as pure as gold. Pure. That’s his little dove all over-

He looks down in his hand and weighs the small bag of nuts she’d gifted him. He lifts it to his nose and inhales their scent. Buttery, sweet, burnt and acrid.

He tips his eyes back up to watch her. Thought creases up his brow. He’ll never know how it is to have such a virtue as a kind heart.

She was made up of honour and purity and softness. Doves feathers, lavender and rose petals. And he is made of cruelty. Of war and broken glass and shards of steel. He was made between ash and snow and a landscape soaking swimming festering in blood.   
  


There’s no kindness in him. No mercy. Barely any love in him either. 

He cares little for humans. After he was turned. That’s just how he became. They became meaningless specs of nothing to him. She has no idea what he is- who he is- he’s sent entire scores and countries of men shrieking to their deaths and writhing in agony into hell, cursing his name on their lips.

And here she was handing him this little harmless gift, like he wasn’t one of the most fearsome beasts put on this earth.

She’s not far away when she turns back - just as he’s about to mount Erland to ride back to Hellford Park once more. He tucks her meaningful present into his coat pocket.

“Erland... Is that a Bavarian name?” She turns and asks curiously. A kind frown on the lintels of her eyebrows. She tilts her head curiously. Her grey eyes glitter innocently off the sun like honey poured onto slate.

She’s so innocent. And it strikes him so deeply right then. _How much he admires that._

He hoists himself into the saddle using the pommel. Feet slipping in the stirrups. Hips resting back onto the cantle behind him.

“It is a Norse name.” He calls to her. Erland is whinnying excitedly. Stomping his hooves to get out to the open fields and get his blood pumping. Kylo can feel the excitement shivering through his stocky legs.

“What does it mean?” She seeks.

“In old Nordic tongue, I believe it means ‘ _Outsider_.’” He tells her.

She smiles. “Well. I trust you both know you have atleast one friend in this Hampshire county.” She smiles.

“Good day, Lord Ren.” She beams brightly. She turns away and she’s already missing the gaze of those melting cocoa eyes appraising her warmly.

Her skin still thrashes from the memory of his touch. All over her skin is alive with the memory of that strength of his. His chest under her hands she’s never felt the like- he was as cold and solid as marble. Some Greek god manifested out of carved stone and come to life.

He turns Erland back onto the snowy road. Clicks his tongue and urges him to run with a sharp dig of his shoe into his side. He feels the ice and the wind sting his skin for all the ride home.

He thinks about her parting gift and her touch against his body for the rest of the day - truly he does. It’s moved him.

He hasn’t been moved so much by another being in all of his years.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do we reckon so far? Any guesses or predictions


	5. Moonlight

Not two days later and the Ashton’s are bid to the Phillips to dine.

They are all in Westwell’s meagre foyer. Mother is fussing with Fathers cravat knot. Posy and Flora are fighting over who gets sole use of the looking glass. They tease at the spilling curls of their hair, they pinch at their cheeks to make them pinker.

They’d already been scrapping all afternoon over who got to wear Iris’s sapphire earrings. Their screeches rang like sharp little butterflies all throughout the house. Posy won the battle for the gems in the end of all things. Iris stayed well out of it. She bid good fortune to the winner.

She’s dressed tonight in another one of her ‘’matrimony inducing’ gowns. According to her mother. But she won’t deny it is a very pretty piece. It sits daintily rasped just off her shoulders, with three-quarter length sleeves. Indian silk fabric, the colour of dusky robin egg blue. It makes her hair look more brilliant, according to their local dressmaker, as she flapped swatches around Iris’s ears to help her mother make a choice.

The neckline at the back drapes low to a row of matching blue buttons marching down her spine. Julia helped tease the teal silk ribbon Posy secured her, into her low done coiffure. Which sat braided and low at the back of her neck. Silver pins shining among the tumble of her dark hair.

This wasn’t a ball and she could gladly forgo gloves. She’s wearing pearl drops from her earlobes. And mother insisted on a draping necklace around her throat. Simple silver necklace. With an oval aquamarine beryl, and a freshwater pearl dropping off it. It sits low in her clavicle and mother ensured the cut of her dress was low. Drawing attention to Iris’s shoulders and her comely bosom.

She does as she’s bade - as ever. She steals a second in the mirror to check her coiffure. Now Posy and Flora are by the door, arguing over slippers and slipping the dainty things on their feet. Spitting fury at each other.

Iris toys with her hair just for a second in the glass. At the wispy muddy bits that curl in front of her ears. She plucks them out of the hair arrangement. Aswell as one gentle curl down the nape of her neck. She lets it rest there. Clasping delicately at her skin.

The care-worn face of her beleaguered father appears behind her in the looking glass reflection. With his greying rust hued hair, his squared fashionable sideburns and his tired, deep eyes the colour of jade marble.

He loosens the linen knot his wife had just pinched tighter around his neck. His eyes warm like a sun baked green meadow when he peers at his eldest. Wrinkles bunch and crease at his eyes and at his mouth when he smiles. He had such a ruddy, open face.

“You look very well tonight my dear.” He comments softly. Tugging at his tight collar. Fixing his green velvet lapels. Iris smiles at her father.

He always was the gentle backbone of encouragement to her. Never once raised his voice to her. He never seemed to grow angry or vexed. Or have a swing of a temper. Those nasty sharp attitudes belonged solely and respectively to her mother. She’s the one who shouts and snipes. Father remains taciturn.

“Thankyou, papa.” Iris beams at him. Turning around as he handed her, her indigo blue cloak. Iris seemed to be the one he favoured. Posy and Flora have slithers of acerbity in their temperaments, like mama. Iris seemed to flourish after his more witty and lenient nature.

She brushes the lapels of his bottle green jacket down. Eyed the fraying seam that’s been stitched up in his shoulder. The faded linen of his shirt. It almost makes her want to go through with this marital farce that’s being forced so thoroughly upon her.

“You look very handsome tonight too, might I add.” She smiles. Adjusting his cravat for him. Loosening it from the choking noose mother had tied. “I know how little you care for the Phillips.” Iris smiles thankfully. Not letting mama hear.

“Mrs Phillips is most agreeable. Her husband however? Most odious man alive. It seems all he can converse about is how cumbersome the grouse is this season.” He relents quietly.

“I deem it unwise to try and escape the acquaintance now. Mama would quite have a _fit_.” Iris supposed. Hushing quietly as she soothes down the points of his collar.

He gives her a sober smile of agreement. His conduct and his temper always so agreeably timid. Humble. Like waves breaking on the dashed sharp rocks. Always yielding.

She finishes with his coat and he goes to pick up his hat from the stand in the foyer, nestled by the front door. Julia is just helping Mama shrug on her coat. And pin her purple and black trimmed shako hat on securely.

She harshly jerks her calfskin black gloves up her wrists with tugging severely sharp motions. Her coat is trimmed with the same onyx and lilac as that of her hat. And her dress beneath is a punchy lavender mauve. And she’s wearing her black lace fichu around her neck in a matronly manner.

Posy and Flora have gone for their best washed silk dresses. Trussed up like twins. Posy is in a muted sage-emerald. And Flora has gone for a waxy and humble tulip-orange. Both have a white lace trim at the waist from the new Belgian lace they bought. Dainty white slippers and stockings on their feet.

“We must go now. The dratted carriage better be here soon, or else we’ll be late.” Mama snaps. Fussing with her coiffure. Issuing orders to the maid after their departure.

If Iris was lucky enough to be spared this outing? And be in their positions. She knows where she’d be. Curled up in the oak farmhouse chair in the kitchen, book in hand, with a cup of chocolate nearby as she warms her toes near the stove.

As it is; she’s off for an evening of white soup by candlelight, strict conversation and a dazzling staggering show of the Phillips wealth. One that will grind mama’s teeth that they can’t compete with such affluence. And one that will have Flora, Posy, and father bored to tears within minutes. Wanting to gouge their eyes out with the ivory soup spoons for something to do.

Iris will not have the time to be bored; she will have to comport herself and display her loveliness to every eligible man in attendance.

She is at the door pulling on her warm gloves when Posy and Flora skip happily up to their elder sister. Posy sing-songs something about Lord Ren. “Maybe your suitor is invited tonight, Iris?” She teases.

Iris levels her a look. Father turns around with his solid brow shooting up to his hairline. “I didn’t know you had a suitor, my dear?” He supposed kindly.

Iris jams an elbow into Posy’s ribs. “That’s because I do _not_ have one-” She insists blithely. Growling intemperately at her pest of a sister.

“She does! She _does_ Papa! And she’s smitten.” Flora speaks up. _The little tick._ Iris tries to swat at her with her gloves.

“You say this about any man who so much as glances in her direction. Posy.” Mother says. Stepping past them all.

“We should be so lucky that one of them might form an attachment.” Mother mutters under her breath. Fixing her cuffs and stepping out the front door to see the carriage drawing up ready to escort them all to the Phillips’.

Iris shares a look of teeth gritting annoyance and forbearance with her father. Who pats her shoulder and gives her one of his crinkly smiles of comfort. She steps up into the cold box of the carriage via the step. Shoving herself far across on the bench.

Posy and Flora ram themselves onto the same bench with Iris. Sharp little elbows and knees digging into their sister; complaining of the lack of room they had. Mother and Father sat opposite. Not speaking. Which was their normality. Her sisters squawks and fusses more than aptly filled the silence.

It’s not long before her mother starts speaking at her father about the household gossip of the day. She seldom expected him to respond.

“Simpson told me today we must hire a new pair of hands for seasonal work up at the farm soon. We can not afford such an expense and reliable staff is so hard to come by in winter. I heard the Norris’s lost one of their farm hands just last night...”

Iris tries to pay attention over Posy and Flora’s inane squabbles about their washed silk embroidered shawls. Posy has lost hers yet again- Flora was the suspected thief.

“Apparently they found the man not five paces from the local tavern in the ditch. He’d drunk a skinful and then got run down by a coach. The fool...” She comments. Iris turns to look at her parents.

“That is unfortunate. Poor fellow.” Father remarks in a detached manner.

“Mrs Bishop wrote to me today too. And according to her, a manservant in her employ has gone missing. Her hall boy. And another labourer from Milton Farm was found just this morning in the woods outside Pembleton. Frozen stiff with cold, reeking of Gin, and he’d been attacked for the coins in his pocket. I honestly don’t know what this world is coming too. Really I don’t.” She remarks.

Iris doesn’t know why. But a coiling slither of a snake wraps around her spine and squeezes.

She shivers. And more worryingly, she can’t go about placing exactly why...

“Perhaps a wild animal is loose hereabout these parts?” Father speculated. Uninterested.

Mother harrumphed a snort of displeasure. “I say men who fall afoul of too much drink deserve everything they get. It’s simply not decent.” She says snappily. Sniffing loftily. Hands crossed in her lap. Brushing imaginary sullying specs off her skirts.

Because of course she’s the type of woman who thinks insobriety and being lost to drink rightfully deserves being torn to pieces.

“I do hope they don’t invite Mrs Norris tonight. She’s such a trying woman. And her daughter is such a useless untalented chit.” Mother says to herself. Posy and Flora hop on into the gossip.

Iris watches out the window. She admires up on the smudged glow of the full moon. Sat pearly and proud in a sky netted full of of bursting white stars. So cold. So beautiful. Untouchable. Shrouding the dark world in silver from miles and leagues and scores away. She can’t understand how people don’t see beauty in this.

It may be a cold, pallid light. But she doesn’t think so. It’s the misty magical cyclops of the night sky. The governing beauty. The crowning keystone of it, in her view. Chariot of pearl.

She lapses into simply watching the night woodland pass by. The shadowed gnarled trees curling up to the heavens. Snow and frost still biting the air. It was thawing somewhat. But it’s not vanished just yet. It still crawls up the trees and lurks at the hard ground.

They arrive at the Phillips modest Manor House. Not two miles outside Pembleton. A most pretty house. Abutting the lane leading directly up next to the small local chapel.

There’s pink rosevines dead in winter, but still smothering most of the front of the white stone house. A modest Georgian manor of thirty rooms. Windows big and square and shining gold onto the gravelled drive that their coach crackles and shifts over as they arrive. Chimneys proudly blaze smoke. And the place looks merry and set on welcoming guests to a delightful dinner.

The Ashton’s are seen inside by the astute white wig clad butler. He takes their coats to the cloakroom, gives them to the footmen. And then shows them to the drawing room, the main parlour, where everyone is gathering. Fireplace making the room stuffy.

Candlelight drips apricot blaze of every wall. The parlour is furnished in trims of green and cream. Trimmed with luxurious velvet. Large gilded gold terrace doors overlook the frosty manicured gardens. Mrs Phillips does so love her tea roses. The air in the garden chokes with them even in this deadening winter.

They all graciously curtsey and bow to their hosts. Mama sits with Mrs Phillips and the other elder matrons. Mrs Phillips sits with her little toy poodle in her lap.

The fluffy little thing drowning under the weight of a ridiculous big pink silk bow tied at its neck. Papa begrudgingly folds his hands behind his back and gets beckoned over for a glass of port with Mr Phillips. He sends a look of dismay at his eldest.

Posy and Flora sit and gossip with their friend. Primrose Phillips. Their daughter. Iris stands alone. She wanders to admire the painting hung up by the terrace doors.

She leans closer, admiring the dark tones of the painting. The brushwork and the detail of the of the still life captured. A case of flowers. It’s very remarkable. She wished her parents appreciated such art over austere sketches of county churches.

Her spine suddenly alights with thrashing hot nerves. Like she’s been scorched by a candle flame and had the burn soothed straightaway with ice. It’s sharply powerful.

She turns where she had her back to the fireplace and all the gossiping Mama’s. Her breath catches just a little at the sight of Lord Ren filling the white parlour doorway.

Coming to bid his hosts a good evening. And his thanks at the invite. Mrs Phillips genially flatters the big man. He towers over all the elegant ladies sat down on their settees like some huge tall dark tree she imagines standing in some foreign forest. Massive and wide. Struck by lightning. Charred to dark cinders.

His eyes gaze downwards, and his jaw grits as Mrs Phillips ineffectual little lap dog starts emitting a low yappy growl. Snarling at the sable haired Lord.

It’s pathetic little maw pulling back over it’s tiny blunt slobbering teeth that gnash at him. Kylo raises a brow and looks down at the fetid creature.

He spears a slicing glance right at it for barely a second and then it’s cowering away.

Whimpering into its mistresses lap. Burying its head into her armpit and cowering. She’s cooing and fussing the awful snappy little thing. Promising it a plate of sweet meats, and a saucer of warm milk.

“I do so apologise, Lord Ren. Such a contrary creature. For my Puffin is _never_ usually so shy of strangers.” She offers in her pitchy high voice. Almost as squeaky as that of her dog.

Hugging the intemperate thing and bouncing it in her lap, coddling it like a firstborn baby. Big silk rosebud bow fluttering in the air. Ugly scrunched up little face and nose of it hiding from him. The dog recognised now who the alpha in this room was.

Kylo tilts up a fleeting corner of his mouth in an attempt at a courteous smile.

“It’s nothing to apologise for, Ma’am. I am often cursed myself, with the same affliction of being wary of strangers.” He says in good humour. Making the ladies all titter laughter.

Iris blushes when he looks away from them and nods his bowed parting. Turns to look across to her. Focuses. Vision concentrated solely on her.

Those onyx gems of eyes settle on the back of that neck of hers. Slice into her. Lingering along the dip of the material that skimmed her fine shoulders and spilled down her shoulder blades.

His gigantic frame is not subtle in striding a swathe across the candle lit parlour. Coming straight to her. Making no secret about who he favours. Opening them both up to the speculation of the whole room-

He doesn’t care not even one bit.

The cool shade of him passes over her shoulder. Her cheeks flushed and she turns and politely curtseys to him. A politely soft “Lord Ren.” Leaves her lips. She feels the hair on the back of her neck raise a little in excitement. Bristling to stand like needles.

He smirks. His kind were the reasons humans had that tingling gut sense. That primal indicator of visceral fear. The hairs on the back of the neck existed solely for the simple reason that blood lusting creatures, demons, such as him walked this earth. She should learn to trust in those instincts more.

Danger present more than ever. For now, there’s a devil at her shoulder.

“Miss Ashton.” He greets simply. Hands composed behind his back. Big chest swells again. No part of this man is small. Every muscle is a huge slab, big and brutally built. Long strong plains of him at every turn.

He takes her hand and kisses it. He’s not wearing gloves. Neither is she. His hands are ice- must be the cold out of doors, she thinks.

Their bare hands touch for the first time. Skin on skin.

It’s electrifying. Sparks skip and shimmer through them.

He bites back a growl as he finally finally _finally_ gets a nose full of her bare skin. Touches her hand. His nose nuzzles her flesh for a second.

Just _one_ scant second. And then he has to enforce every shred of willpower he owns and knows, in order to pull away.

She’s as exquisite as he dreamt. As he lusted about. Her skin is the most dangerous thing about her. Because it’s the hardest thing he’s had to do to resist tasting more of it. The gorgeous scent and the salt of the bare skin. Hint of spicy lavender. Chalky bergamot soap she used. The fragrance of silk on her skin.

_Bewitching_. Her scent sends a tremor through his usually dead spine.

Tonight his garb as is midnight ink dark as it usually is. Velvet black waistcoat. Obsidian breeches and shining proud boots and brushed overcoat. With a cream cravat and a white shirt. Like the full moon out in that black sky tonight. Pearl trim backed with sable. His cravat diamond pin glitters - oddly enough - like a far off star.

If he looks like a winters sky shrouded by a pearly moon. She looks the opposite. Her blue dress is the colour of the brightest searing shade of a summers sky. Her eyes made brilliant by it. And he likes the silk blue ribbon tumbled prettily into her hair. Like some stream trickling through a golden meadow on a midsummers eve.

“If I may say, how beautiful you look tonight. Miss Ashton.” He smiles. Hands folded back once more. His wide chest puffing out freely. His intimidating size at its usual ferocity.

She feels her cheeks heat a little more. “Thankyou your, Lordship.” She flusters. “I’m sure I deserve no such meaningful praise. It is only a plain silk dress.” She dismisses.

“Made striking by she who wears it.” He insists. She smiles at her feet. Diverting the attention.

“How is that big beautiful horse of yours?” She asks nicely. He smirks a little. His eyes are charcoal-honey from the the nearby candlelight. He likes her enquiry.

“He is very well. Misbehaving himself plenty. And nearly threw me yesterday on account of mutiny and protest for want of more carrots.” He jokes.

“ _Oh_ dear.” She laughs. “I seem to have caused dissension in your own stables.” She apologised. Sorry he almost got hurt.

“He shouldn’t be too perturbed at me. I’m the only one who rides him out.” He offers.

“I should like to ride more. We only have the two horses on the farm and they are often reserved for use in labour out in the fields. And there always seems far too many errands stacked against me to indulge in the pastime.” She tells.

“Then I must beg you come over and use Erland as much as you should wish to. He is rather fond of you. And Hellford is a vast estate of which ride on. I should be delighted it gets use beyond someone other than myself.” He offers.

“I thank you for the invitation. I’ve never fully seen all of Hellford.” She explains. “Only the front parlour and that was very long ago. I was only a little girl then.”

“You must come again and honour it with another visit.” He concludes.

“Hellford’s grounds are very handsomely kept. The rose gardens are exquisite. And there’s 4 acres of woodland with plenty of good riding routes. I’d be vastly happy to show you them, any time you should like.” His smile tipped a little at the corners. Breaking up the stoicism of his usually stern scowl.

“That’s very kind. As long as you are sure it won’t interrupt any of your business endeavours.” She offers politely.

“My business was concluded days ago. I’m most happily and currently at my own leisure.”

She smiles in agreement. “That must be so relaxing.”

Iris wished she had one day whereby she could be at her own peace. Do as she liked. Go wherever she wanted and not have anyone else’s expectations hanging over her like heavy nimbuses.

“It has its merits.” He smiles lightly down at her. Before his eyes flicker to the painting over her shoulder that she was admiring.

“There’s even a Velasquez in the foyer at Hellford. Just begging to admired by appreciative eyes.” He adds. Her face lights up.

“I’ve never seen a real Diego Velasquez in person. Only pictures from books in my fathers study.” She says in amazement.

“His ‘ _Los Barrochos’_ hangs in my hallway.” Kylo says with a hint of pride. “Now you simply have to visit, to come see it. Purely on unselfish grounds, Miss Ashton. Just for the arts sake.” He smarts.

She smiles back. Apples of her cheeks pinking up again. “I would be delighted. No art should go unappreciated after all. You’re quite correct.” She smiles with good natured levity.

His eyes gleam almost warmly, with wickedly pleased satisfaction. Crushed charcoal and honey of his eyes are captivating to look into. To drown in. That’s exactly what she does.

Across the parlour, where a whole gaggle of mama’s and daughters are watching the room, speculating about it. They weren’t aware, but many eyes were glued to Iris and Lord Ren.

Posy and Flora shared a pleased giddy look that the first time they’ve actually seen the severe man almost lets a smile crack his marble statue façade, and it’s because of their sister.

“I think your dear Iris may have caught the biggest, richest prize in the pond. Mrs Ashton.” Mrs Phillips says with a smug proud expression, leans towards Iris’s mother and gently taps her hand. They were fond companions after all. Mrs Phillips other podgy hand, laden with pearl brackets and fat gemstone rings, was fondly stroking at Puffin’s ears now he’s calmed down.

Caroline looks across at her eldest as she converses with Lord Ren. A slight frown crinkles her brow.

“She would do vastly well to land a Lord.” Miss Smith Interjects. Sat on Caroline’s immediate right.

She was a willowy woman. Figure like many twigs glued together. Gawky face. Beak of a long nose that she took great delight in shoving into business that was not her own. She was a harmless woman really. The general village busy body, and a spinster at three and fifty. Another close confidant and friend in the gossip vine for Caroline Ashton.

“For Hellford is _such_ a handsome house. Biggest land holding in all the county... Think what a lucky girl she would be to be mistress of it!” Miss Smith adds. Giggling in excitement like a young girl.

Mrs Phillips steals another glance at the handsome couple. “They do make a fine pair. For she’s fairly handsome and he’s rich. Their children would be such darling things. Very dark colouring. But I fear he’s not to everyone’s taste...Something very, prohibitive, about his manner that I cannot place.” She decides.

“I heard he takes little joy in anything. It is most odd.” Miss Smith agrees with their host most eagerly.

“He does not dance. He barely drinks. His conversation is little and dry. And beyond the sport of his estate he rarely circulates in society. That must the foreign way of things in Bavaria.” Miss Smith sniffs with disdain. Turning her nose up at the merest intimation of something foreign.

“Foreign and continental European manners are certainly nothing to admire.” Mrs Phillips declares. The ladies three then look at the young couple again.

“ _Mmmm_. I would suspect that an attachment is starting to bloom thereabouts...” She adds cunningly. As casually as if she was looking out her window and deciding the weather.

“If they do marry. One can’t doubt the match would indisputably fine. But we would rarely see her if she marries a man so limited from the ton... what a cruelty that would be on her! Not to mention his estate is in Bavaria. What a grave loss she would be to us all.” Mrs Phillips croons sadly.

Caroline looks over to her daughter. Where the shadow of the inexcusably large man and his dark shade looms over her. They are conversing quietly and genially with each other. If she’s not mistaken, she spots a brush of pink to Iris’s cheeks.

“Indeed. I cannot doubt as fine a proposition as he would be... I would be more greatly comforted by her being settled here. At home. Nearer to us all.” Caroline insists to both her companions.

“What about Brendol Hux’s son? Armitage. Wasn’t there a _téndre_ between them some while ago? Now there. Perhaps that may be rekindled to better everyone’s satisfactions?” Miss Smith nods gladly cupping Caroline’s hand. As if Iris’s affairs were her very own to meddle with.

“Indeed. I should not wish for poor Iris to marry so high above her dignity. She shouldn’t quit her sphere. Lord Ren should go and find himself an Heiress or a nice Duchess, if he must marry. That would do him well.” Mrs Phillips ultimately decides.

Stouton, the excellently precise butler, enters the room and gives a dignified sharp nod to Mrs Phillips. Who announces to the room that dinner is ready. As the highest ranking gentleman in the room, Lord Ren escorts the lady of the house in to dine. Everyone follows in their lead.

The dining room is very prettily done in shades of red and gold. The table groans with the amount of polished silverware. Glassware twinkles in the light off the fire and the numerous candles. Air spiced by the silver tiered platters of exotic fruit sitting in the table centre at measures intervals. Deep scent of plums and fleshy red apples gently radiate their sweet scent up the air. Red grapes drip from these rich arrangements.

Everyone is seated according to rank and hierarchy. Mrs Phillips crowns the head of the table in her gown of demure blush muslin. Train drifted behind her like a galleon setting sail when the stout portly woman moved.

Kylo is placed to Mrs Phillips’ right. Iris is lower down in rank. But she is placed two places opposite him across the finely laid table. Smooth as a square of white marble is the laid linen tablecloth.

Mrs Phillips oversees the serving of the white soup. A frothy pallid broth made of veal stock, egg yolks, ground almonds and cream. To be eaten demurely along with the light conversation. Of which is quick to flourish along the table in this bored-rigid country society.

Kylo sups down his soup, and he is caught by the change in topics as it shifts. Mr Phillips is speaking up to Mr Ashton about it.

“Did you hear that the Norris’s lost one of their farm hands last eve. Just dreadful news...” Mr Phillips croaks up. Shaking his head into his wine glass.

Kylo watches Iris innocently turn her head in the conversations intended direction. Two seats down from her. His eyes follow the pretty turn of her head. He tried not to look too closely at the elegant line of her pale throat. Nor at the little drop of red wine that lingered in the corner of her lips.

He imagined it dripping its smooth rolling path down her neck. Over that pearl necklace. Only he didn’t exactly imagine it was _wine_...

More people engage in the horrid nature of the conversation. Society being shocked by it. “Where was the Norris’s farm hand found?” Miss Smith piped up. Eager for details. Aghast. Clutching her chest in overdone fright.

“Middle of the woods apparantly. He’d run for some time away from whatever terror hunted him. Looked like an animal had set to him something vicious, according to the local magistrate. Poor fool.” Mr Phillips announces morbidly.

_Ah yes_. Kylo remembers the one. The second farm hand he’d feasted on.

He’d watched from the shadows as the letch tried to snatch a young maids purse outside the chapel. She’d been coming back from a dance on her own late at night. He’d watched the man grope her with fat wandering meaty hands. Squeezed her bottom and her bosom and terrified her. Told her gruffly he could either take her money or her virginity. Left her sobbing in the dirt and ran off cackling with her purse.

Kylo followed his foul stench. Gin and rot of sweat and various vile body odours souring his nose. He wasn’t hard to find.

Followed the disgrace of a man deep into the heart of the woods. The idiot soon caught wind of his feral aggressor and ran fleeing. He caught him. And he ripped him to pieces and drank him all down. Was still picking bits of him out his teeth, come to mention it.

His tongue idly strokes the front of one of his canines at the memory of it.

“Is it man or beast that killed him?” Mrs Phillips asks.

“Someone up near Lord Hearst’s estate say that a wolf had been spotted thereabouts lately.”

“A wolf!” Miss Smith shrilled. “ _Oh_ , good heavens.” She frets. Dramatically dripping her soup spoon.

“Do not be uneasy. Miss Smith.” Mr Ashton declares. Patting her hand nicely where he’s sat next to her.

“It is folly. Surely. There haven’t been wolves in this country since the Hundred Years’ War.” Mr Ashton declares. “Fret not.”

“Of course those are the rumours circulating on the estates. Especially surrounding Hellford.” Mrs Phillips pipes up. Turning her attention to Lord Ren. Many pairs of curious scared eyes swivelled to the man near the head of table, as he took a sip of his red wine.

“I’m afraid I cannot offer any consolation nor relay any satisfaction upon the matter. I have seen no such beast on my land, Mrs Phillips. Maybe it is a stray dog... after all...” He trails away. Eating another mouthful of the white soup.

“There is always such gossip prone to over _exaggerate_ these things, is there not?” He drawls lowly. His dark eyes flicker up and land in Iris‘s own. His smile smoothly twitches. He couldn’t help it.

His meaning scared her. For she did not know it’s intention. His eyes looked different when he remarked upon that. They looked... odd. Like cloud passing over a sunny day. Something then swarmed his eyes. And it looked _feral._

A shiver rockets down her spine. Makes her breath spurt out ragged and catch in her throat.

Posy is sat on Iris’s left and she’s determined not to be left out the conversation. She must have her share in it. “My friend remarked that he heard it was a huge black Wolf with bright yellow eyes the colour of sunflowers.” She remarks.

“Posy. I think that may be idle speculation.” Iris insists lightheartedly.

Posy frowns stroppily. “I heard it directly from Mary Sampson’s mouth. And she _never_ tells tall tales.” She insists firmly. Iris nods and goes back to eating her soup.

“Maybe it’s the work of a mad man?” Miss Smith pipes up worriedly. Iris swore she hears the room collectively heave a sigh of annoyance into their soup spoons.

“Some nasty beastly mad man roaming the countryside and cutting people up who come across his path. He might be vicious. What’s next? He could decide to come and murder us in our beds.” She panics pithily. “Cut our throats in the night!!” She says frenziedly.

“ _Oh_ I shall have to get Barlow to put another bolt lock on my bedroom door or I shall never sleep again!” She declares.

She did so fuss over the most inconsequential of things. Like the time she swore that the black plague was making a comeback - for she heard her maid sneeze three times in a row one day whilst bringing her tea. She was so prone to hysterics and exaggeration.

Kylo wants to roll his eyes at her stupidity. Maybe his next victim should be her- maybe he should slaughter her in her bed. Rid the world of her vapid panicking.

Iris smiles gently across at the flustered spinster. “Don’t overexert yourself, Miss Smith. I’m sure it’s just town gossip conjured up with the intention of frightening us.” She soothes.

“I’m sure it’s not as evil as it first seems... There may be more reasons as to why they lost their lives.”

Kylo does look at her right then. His little dove. Sat there with her brow all creased up with worry for this vapid inconsequential woman.

She truly does have a heart of gold.

Mrs Phillips speaks up again. “You know I did hear that two of the men were known drunkards. And one of them was found next to a lane. It seemed he wandered into the road after drinking a skinful and was struck by a speeding carriage. Poor soul.” She declares.

“And the other man was robbed. Though he was rumoured to be the horrid purse snatcher who lurked around the chapel last week. Some other desperate thief must’ve caused his unfortunate death out of want of his loot. There, there, my dear. All is well.” Mrs Phillips ladled comfort into her friend. Smiling heartily at her.

Miss Smith seems to settle down. She nods. Hand clasped dramatically to her chest. Mr Ashton pours her more wine and she takes back great thudding gulps of it.

Iris shares another fleeting look with Lord Ren. He smiles delicately at her. Mr Phillips resumes his usual spouting on and on about the grouse season. He ropes Kylo into an invite to come shoot his grouse whenever he pleases. Miss Smith keenly traps the ladies into a conversation about printed cotton.

They talk all through the next course about more savoury things. They are served broiled partridges with gravy for the next, and an entire haunch of roasted venison. Cooked to retain just a tinge of pink. And just a slight dribble of ichor when the meat was sliced into. Served with stewed sopping celery drowned in cream. And buttered carrots and boiled potatoes. The food swamped the table in great big heaped portions on silver platters.

Kylo was glad they didn’t cook such a rich meat until it was a slab of boiled grey toughness. He tears his sharp teeth into the slices of roast deer and eats his big fill. Licks the iron-copper tinge of blood off his lips. It lightly sates the animal gnawing at his belly. But he needs proper blood.

Needs the liquid metal rush of it pouring down his throat and staining his white teeth crimson.

The full moon was bringing out his more feral senses. It always does. Gets him restless and baying for blood with a hell of a thirst. The need to feed more intense than ever.

As the pudding arrives, Kylo is sipping more claret and letting his suave black gaze wander over to Miss Ashton again. She’s talking to one of her innumerable silly pests of a sister.

He lets his eyes stroke along her, and admire her for a second. Such a gaze doesn’t go unnoticed by Caroline Ashton. Down the table she sees Lord Rens gaze linger on Iris- and she wonders...

Her reverie is broken by the arrival of pudding. As it was still colder, a steaming great whitepot pudding is served. Bread and butter and cream with currants dotted into the sponge. Flavoured with mace and nutmeg. Alongside this is served a tower of marzipan fruit and cold fruit tartlets. Lots of sugar and whipped cream and strawberries steeped in sugar syrup.

Lord Ren does not oblige himself in sweets. He’ll have his fill later. Find some wandering idiot drunk to indulge his true appetites.

Evebtually, the ladies separate from the gentlemen. They are left around the table to smoke cheroots, or sip port, as the ladies retire to the parlour for embroidery or gossip.

Kylo watches his little dove stand and head away. Smiling demurely at him before she goes. He snatched up every second of it.

She turns and walks away, led by her sister. He longs after the nape of her neck as she departs. The pale arch of it kissed by dark twirls of hair.

She feels like she can’t breathe until she gets out of the room. She takes a deep breath and wets her lips as they come to the second parlour.

Mrs Phillips particular favourite room. For her particular use. Iris can see why; it’s gaudy and decorated to drowning point with rosebud fabrics. Its nature was definitely intended to be ladies room. Draped and stuffed with pink velvety drapes, cream carpets and gold gilded French furniture. Pillows and cushions stuffed onto the settee in blush rose print. Ruffles and flounces and so many more eye-watering trims.

Iris feels a little nauseous walking into the sickly sweet room. But she sits dutifully on the settee by the window and sips whatever snifter Mrs Phillips put into her hand. Negus, Iris thinks it might be. A favourite punch at balls. Port mixed with boiled water, nutmeg and sugar syrup. 

Mrs Phillips insists something warming helps aid with the digestion. Flora and Posy are feeding little nuggets of sweet meats to Puffin the toy dog as he yips for more. Mother is talking with her matrons again.

And Iris is sat looking out at the moon. Candlelight casts up one side of her face. She lets it’s watery gently light wash over her. Listen to the matrons giggling in their corner. And Posy and Flora gossiping with Primrose.

She thinks how nice it must be to be entirely thousands of miles away. Alone in the sky. Free of burden. Just being known for casting beautiful light onto the earth.

“Pleasant, isn’t she?” Comes a deep voice at her side. Deeper and thicker than oozing warm honey.

She smiles. The gentlemen have come in. Fresh from their all male talk and their port and their smoking. Brandy and cheroot smoke sticks to his coat. Though he didn’t imbibe in either. Just more port.

Lord Ren is stood by her side again. Arms behind his back in their usual place. Looking up at the very orb of a thing that’s firing his blood. Then he glances downwards and sees the earth-bound mortal form of the woman who does the very same. Only she’s touched on more softer, hidden parts of him.

“Such beauty.” She remarks. She tilts her head up at it. “Some remark it is a cold light. But-“

“I disagree.” Lord Ren adds. Interjecting. Smiles down at her. When she looks up. The flash of her pale skinned neck and the side of her jaw cast in the moon and the candlelight makes his mouth water. Her eyes are divinely silver. Just like another soul he knows and loves...

“There is mystery. For even the moon has her burdens and her secrets. The brightest thing in the sky has the darkest side that’s never revealed to a soul.” He supposed. His eyes catching in hers.

She can see by the weighting of his granite eyes. That he means that phrase very deeply.

“Much the same as people. I grant. Enigmatic, if they so choose to be.” She says.

“Some darker sides of people, Miss Ashton, should never see the light.” He tells her.

She feels like he’s speaking from experience. She opens her mouth to ask. But her mother hissing her name and gesturing her over with a spurring-curling motion of her hand, breaks the hypnotic spell his eyes gripped on her.

She looks back up at him. He extends a hand to help her up. There’s that thrill of electricity again. Needles up her arm and wracks at her spine.

“I think it likely my mother will encourage us home soon. I’ll take my leave of you now.” She says sadly. Though she doesn’t wish too- he feels her sadness and her dread.

She curtseys. Bows her neck to him. Dips at her knees. He doesn’t relinquish his gentle clasp of her hand.

“Until next time, Miss Ashton.” He drawls low.

She dies on the spot when her turns her palm over and presses a kiss to her sensitive weak hand. Holding her fingers with one hand and rubbing his thumb over the spot he just kissed.

His lips are devilishly soft and when he looks up at her her spine crumbles. She shivers and he _hears_ it. Her chest flutters a breath with it.

“I bid you good evening, Lord Ren. It was a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was entirely mine.” He hushes so low. He manages to make his words sound sordid. Rascally and humming deep. So deep her bones rang with it and all her the soft tissue meat of her, quivers.

This feels like _seduction_.

Knee weakening seduction. She feels her cheeks beating out unattractive pink heat. Flushed from head to toe. Breath stutters into her pathetic shrivelling lungs. She doesn’t know what this is- what this man is wielding onto her. She’s never felt the likes of it before.

She takes her hand from him, drags her eyes from the addictive granite pools of his, and steps aside to go to her mother. As she bade. She feels his eyes on her back as she walks away across the room.

She curls her hand into a fist. So she might better preserve the searing memory of his kiss.

It’s ridiculous and silly. But she keeps her hand fisted shut the whole way home. Thinks back to the hunger in his eyes and feels flushed whenever she remarks how it sat there- all for her and her alone.

~

The whole world seems asleep. When the vampires roam to feed. Kylo swore this whole sleepy county is deaf and dull now. Even the very last scullery maid of every grand house, and kitchen skivvy had extinguished the very last candle hours ago. Night looms thick and bitter.

The moon in all her pallid smudgy eminence, still owns the whole sky and blots out the glory of the stars. Gently kissing onto the navy heavens. Kylo has hunted under that very same silver moon.

It recharged the restless rough animal in his bloodstream.

Tonight, after dining, He took his leave. Took to the woods. Waited. Chased down his prey and drank his fill. Toasting his success under that watery bright light. Left the mangled and twisted body like a mortal offering of a sacrifice to the old gods. Basted the landscape in the blood he didn’t want, watering the icy crusted dirt of the earth. Staining the snow.

Humans all went back into the earth at the end. Returned to the mud and soil and rot of where they came from. Decayed to frail dirty bones and that’s all that remains. He was just helping them get there a tad quicker.

Crimson blooms down his white shirt and white cravat. It trails down the corner of his mouth and chin until he licks it clean. Sucks up the remains with his fingers til his face is clean. Garnet however is still marring his white square teeth.

His eyes are still golder than coin. Fresh off the hunt. Dappled in blood. And he finds himself stepping through the dark-dead, grey wood. To a place that now seemed familiar to him.

The house is dark. Every window dull. Even the dormers in the attic where their maids slept, even there all is deathly dark like the eye of a skull. He sets his sights on one bedroom window in particular.

Her window was cracked open- and when he gets up to it, silent as a shadow, he sees why. The fire makes her room too muggy. This way the stifling sticky heat had somewhere to escape too.

Her curtains are drawn, twitching on the breeze. And the fireplace lit at the end of her bed, across the room in the Morris wallpapered alcove of the hearth, casts the room in amber. As if she’s encased in it. Trapped. Preserved like an item of jewellery in this flamed room.

That wasn’t too far away from an accurate description. She is trapped. One day she’ll be sold into marriage by her mother. Then she’ll be trapped by the fetid husband she’s supposed to serve obediently; to wait on hand and foot, and dole out his heir and a spare, like she’s shelling peas.

He sneaks his big hand under the crack in the sash window, silently lifts it up and slips inside. Curtains rustle and he leaves them pushed apart to fit through. Steps down onto her windowsill, then onto the floor. His clothes barely make a rasp. His shoes don’t even scrape the whining buckled floorboards.

He’s inside, and his golden eyes catch onto the sleeping little dove, huddled up as a lump into the quilts of her bed.

Her hair is loose and crumpled around her head. Face turned away from him. Night down slipping off a shoulder. Wispy thin. Like gauzy moth wings. Exposing her chest, the shadowed mounding globes of her breasts. Swelling and falling.

He can see the thud of her mortal heart wrack her skin. Pulsing her throat. Thudding out her wrists. Beating that lavender and bergamot soap scent out to his senses. Calling to him. Enslaving him. The creature she could never have a hope to tame.

He gazes at her as he rounds the end of the bed. Softly paces around it. She won’t wake. His nature makes highly sure of that. Vampires are after all, darkly magic animals. Predatory too. He can stun his prey the way he wants. The way he needs too. He’ll lull her body into deep sleep like a newborn. Seduce her weak mortal self to bend to his will.

He sits on the mattress near her hip. Watching her face sloped peaceful in gentle rest. His blood crusted hands reach out, drying rust caked at his nails, big fingertips slipping over her knuckles where her hand lay down by her side. The other folded across her waist.

He strokes along her arm. Watches her rest. Soothes his animosity with the tactile soft of her innocent skin.

His fingers travel upwards to her hair. He lifts it off her neck and rakes his fingers through the golden-brown wave of it. It drifts through his fingers like spun bronzed-gold that smells of French lavender.

A big wave of heat and perfume of bare skin hits him when he peels her hair away. Warm from where she’s cosily snuggled into her pillow.

He moans desperately. Like a wounded animal. The most gut-wrenching sob falls out his mouth.

He can’t help it. Moth to a flame. He’s drawn across the bed until his lips hit at her skin. Tracing the jugular in her throat. He tremors with need. From being within the barest millimetre of being able to taste her warm skin. That manna sent from heaven, put on this earth for him alone to savour.

“What in gods name are you doing to me, little dove?” He gasps. His speech muffled into her skin. He kisses at her hot throat and growls low in his when he feels her blood beat under his tongue.

This close to her- and he didn’t want to tear open her throat with the white knives of his sharp teeth. She’s worth more than that.

_Oh_ , he knew she’d taste so sweet to feast on. He just _knows_ it. She will. She’ll taste like thick honey and coins and sugared copper.

“You take me so beyond any lust or any need I’ve ever felt in my entire life.” He promises to her.

He’s still close. Kissing hot embraces of butterfly kisses at her neck. Gold eyes glittering so stark in the blue and amber half light of her bedchamber. Like yellowed cats eyes.

“What is this?” He asks her. “What I feel for you- how does it never stop?...” He begs to know. Begs to be shown clarity over this force.

His chest brushes into hers where she lays on the bed. He kisses up to her jaw. His adoring fingers skim over her cheek. Finding her cheekbone and trailing along its shape under her tender skin.

He kisses her jawbone and moans again. Hum of his deep voice soaking trembling into her skin from his hot blooded mouth. Copper souring in his tongue and teeth.

“I so _long_ to kiss you.” He aches for it. Aches so deep it’s a physical pain in his gut. He groans, hard already at the merest thought of it. And that was just at tasting her _mouth_ -

“But I want you awake and willing in my arms when I kiss you for the first time. I’ll have you trembling and weak for me. Now I just have to wait to be able to taste those pretty lips.” He whispers onto her chin.

Adores her face like this whilst he can. Top of his nose presses under her jaw and he takes a deep breath of her neck, whimpering with need.

He pants into her neck once more. “Sleep well. Little dove.”

He strokes her cheek kisses it one last time before he tears himself off the bed and slips away. Leaving her room as smoothly as a silent shadow.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give me some thots 💕


	6. Hopes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh! And happy Valentines. Here- have two budding lovers 💕

Hellford park was a domineering house. It was as proud as it was beautiful.

A high and grand edifice of squared buff sandstone with the very same in all its trimmings. The roof is welsh slate. And the front of the house echoed it’s Palladian and baroque design. The Doric order pillars out front hold up a looming triangular outset to the building. There are three floors. Three towering floors all full of windows.

The house sits vast in its horizon. Dominating. She had walked up through the woods from Pembleton. A good twenty minutes of walking down the front drive merely to get to the place. Through a resplendent wrought iron black gate that looked nearly eerie in the morning fog. The cawing of throaty crows echoed around the tall dark trees that nearly eclipsed the sun. She opened that creaking gate and slipped on through. Feeling like a doomed trespasser on Lord Ren’s land.

When the walk along the paved road clears of the governing country nature, each side of her not now lined with massive oaks, and the dark wood thinned out, the sun shone down on her in speckles through the spreading tree tops.

She listens to the cooing call of wood pigeons in the far off trees. The sizzle of wind ruffling the dead leaves on their branches. Sizzling and spitting and rattling in the air. And the cold bitter landscape seems buttery warm, the colour of dandelion sunshine lifts every facet of nature. Melts the snow. Makes the countryside all merry again. Thaws it from the unfeeling and cruel fingers of frosty winter.

Though she can still see wisps of her breath flutter the air. And she tugs her rabbit lined gloves up her wrists to keep warm. Her soles crackle along the road in the misty frost.

She’s on yet another errand this morning. In her battered blue wool coat, her quite hopeless brown boots. She hadn’t seen the need for a bonnet, and now her ears are feeling the price of such a poor decision. Tipped with icy pink.

The dappling sun tangled in her hair. Where it’s scooped back off her face in a semi braided coiffure. She had her plain wool dress on. It was a boring shade of chowder grey pinstriped with white. But it did it’s occupation of keeping her warm better than her old pelisse did.

She comes up to the view of the house. Admiring how vast and proudly it stands. Resolute even under the strong sun. The sky behind its roof is a net of crepe cotton blue splashed with smeared white clouds.

From the vantage point on the road, where she is, far far far down below the humongous beast, the vast wall of windowpanes wink icy in the sunlight across at her. The huge pond to the front of Hellford Manor, is deep glass green, and navy skipped with gold from the mirrored reflection of the sky.

Her steps rap sharply on the hard road, clapping off the house and bouncing back to her. Mingled in with sounds of the woods, of the birds and the trees and the wind ruffling through it all.

She steps up to the cavernous entryway and the door that’s eight feet taller than she is. Doesn’t know if she’ll get a reply knocking here- she hopes she does.

She knocks her gloved hand loud and clear on the door. Taps her knuckles loudly three times. Hears it ricochet off the house behind and in front of her. Probably drifting through that elegantly extensive marble foyer that was bound to be inside. Manor this grand was bound to have a colossal foyer for entertaining.

She stares up at the great big white painted door in fervent hope. A few seconds pass. Nothing but the silence of her own anticipation.

She’d brought Lord Ren some welcoming gifts that high society hereabouts has decided to bestow on him. The ladies and matrons of prominence are thankful for his mentioning he’d keep an eye open for the terrorising wolf on his land.

Mrs Phillips sent him a box of Turkish dried fruits and sticky figs drowned in honey. Miss Smith sent a bottle of port and a selection of sweet meats. Her own mother had declined to send him anything.

Iris was affronted at her sudden distant behaviour when days before she’d been clamouring for her daughter to prostrate herself at his mighty feet. So she snuck to the kitchen earlier and secreted away two dead partridge’s when she wasn’t looking.

Cook was on her side covering for her. She’d spin Mrs Ashton a cunning tale that the cat got into them and she had to discard them. Let’s hope Iris’ mother didn’t decide to take action against the innocent tabby.

She’d also put in some of cooks chutney and her famous jam. She was a crass red faced, battle axe Irish woman of stout size and many years. But she liked making sure the people around her were well fed. She was a kindly woman to Iris.

Many times as a scolded young girl, belittled for improper behaviour, or something petty Caroline nitpicked over, she’d find herself hiding from mama in the kitchen. Wedged between the stove and the butchers block. Red faced and sobbing tears.

Cook - Mrs Murphy as she doesn’t like to be commonly known as - would crossly stop whatever she was doing. Whatever soup or sauce she was preparing, whatever un-plucked game bird awaited stripping by her hands, or whatever haunch of meat needed seasoning, she would stop.

Wiping her hands on her grubby apron. She’d pour Iris a cup of chocolate, sit her by the open stove and put a warm rug around her shoulders. Tell her to dry her eyes on her handkerchief. She always had one to hand. “There now. Dry your eyes. Pet.” In her soothing County Kildare, Irish brogue.

“Here’s to hoping the road rises up to meet you yet.” She’d always say. Her way of wishing all the pain and obstacles to her happiness be plucked free right out of her life. Mrs Murphy knew, even back then, what strain Iris was being put under to be the perfect daughter. Drowning under expectations at such a bonny young age.

So when Iris went to her this morning, interrupting her making her brown onion soup and scotch collops ready for supper, she asked for some donations to a man whose been kind to her, and to the scared flustered hens of matrons in the village. Cook raised a brow. “I see.” She said cannily. With an all-knowing understanding to her tone.

Steered Iris into the cold larder and gave the game, the jam and some other goods. “This wouldn’t be that infamous Lord I’ve been hearing whispers about, now, would it?” She asks with a hand on her hip. Iris blushes.

“He’s- merely an acquaintance.” Iris insists sweetly.

“ _Aye_. And I’m the goddess queen of the upper Nile.” She smarts flatly.

“Be off with ya now pet. Before your mother gives you what for.” She says gruffly. Plonking two rosy pink apples in her hands for her journey to Hellford park. Before jabbing her thumb the back door over her own shoulder. Continuing rolling out her pastry with sticky-flour and buttery hands. She watches Iris head out with the baskets. One on each arm as usual. She smiles when she leaves.

A good girl she was- much rounder temper than her silly sisters. Cook loves Iris like a daughter. And in damn sure more of a maternal way than her dragon of a mother ever did.

Surprisingly, Iris didn’t have to wait too long at Hellford’s grand oak door before it is shuddered open with a whine from the other side.

The very pleasant face of Kylo’s butler greets her. A red dastar turban covering his head. His arrowhead shaped goatee was black shot through with silver. Straight as a yardstick. And oiled finely. He appears very well groomed and meticulous. A fine warm scent of lime blossom and something like citrus or oranges woven into his cologne.

She smiles warmly at him. Hands across her calling card through the gap of the door. “Good Morning. I’m so sorry to disturb you- but I’m just paying a call to deliver some-”

His warm face breaks into a warm beam. One of honesty and recognition. “He told me we should be expecting you, Miss Ashton.” He smiles gladly. Already apprised of her being here. Widening the door for her.

“Please do come in...” He urges. Iris likes the warm cadence to his voice. The distinctive accent of his sounds like honey syrup or spiced cloves. Comforting and rich. A voice that promises nothing but warmth and friendliness in its offering.

Where he widens the door, Iris catches a glimpse of the exotic threads of his clothing. Something akin to a silk coat covers his top half. Indigo ink silk with buttons that glimmered like raindrops in rain. It’s almost military style in its fashion. He is a lean, towering man with broad shoulders. Though not as powerfully foreboding as the man he serves. His coat covers most of his legs. His knees are clad in loose fitting black trousers of thin substance. Puffy at the knees. Tucked into impressively shiny black boots.

The sun catches on a bangle on his right wrist when he moves. Hitting against the silk of his peacock blue sleeve. When she stopped in, she sees the coat is embroidered with twirls of silver thread stitched into vines. It was such a beautiful garment. She’s in awe of it.

She steps in from the cold, thanking him, and the huge house engulfs her. It’s warm for such a colossal place. And she was right. The foyer is entirely marble.

Marble pointed tile floor. Walnut panelled walls and wainscoting coat the house. Set with gilded gold frames resting on them, surrounding impressive paintings. Black votives of candles stand lit and flickering amber flame. A gigantic mouth of a limestone fireplace is directly ahead on the wall. It’s twice as big as her bedchamber, that one hearth alone. Roaring flames lit within. Around the neatest pile of logs that blazed. Not even a spec of ash was out of place. There’s no decoration. Hardly any vases or relics. That’s strikes her as odd.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Ashton.” He bows his head respectfully and tucks his hands behind his back. “I am Raajaa Jomar. Lord Ren’s butler.” He introduces himself.

“Pleasure to meet you. Mr. Jomar. I only called by to give Lord Ren a few tokens of gratitude from some local families.”

He smiles and accepts the baskets from her. “Of course. How kind. Do follow me to wait in the parlour. I will see to finding his lordship.”

He leads her through the impressive house. Walking her deeper into the expensive bowels of the place. She walks demurely behind him. Aghast at the display of wealth that lines every wall. It hangs in the dripping crystal and spotless chandeliers. The way the tiles underfoot gleam like they’ve been scrubbed mercilessly.

Paintings ooze oil and grandeur dour wealth from their spots on the walls. Ancient portraits of powdered wigs and styles of the 1700’s. Robes a la Francaise and beauty spots on powdered faces and craggy noses, casting a disapproving eye out at her.

He brings her to a double door entrance of a richly furnished parlour. Decorated with red and white. Fire roars in the pearl marble of the hearth. She steps onto the fine cushion of a scarlet Aubusson rug. Sees her reflection in the huge antique mirror above the mantel. The room is trimmed in old French antiques. Side tables and end tables around the garnet red settees that bleed gold gild at their tops.

“Do please make yourself comfortable Miss Ashton. I will arrange for a tray of tea and refreshments be brought to you.” He bows his head politely again.

She feels like calling out to stop him. She was only here to pay call delivering a basket after all. Which she now sets both things down on the immaculately polished low table, set before her. She sinks into the luxuriously soft settee. Plump velvet feather cushions catch her back and prop her up.

She feels rather nervous. Here, in this grand place in her shabby coat and ragged boots.

She’s looking out the white glass of the terrace doors into the finely trimmed dutch gardens. Neat shrubs arranged in symmetrical patterns with paths cutting through to the lawn. A fountain crowns the central spoke of the flowerbeds. Blooming waxy tulips in summer spring up there. In punching reds and fierce oranges.

In no time whatsoever, a waify scurrying maid appears in the doorway. Thin arms laden with a silver tray of a tea service. She smiles a beaming polite grin over at Iris. Who bids her a good afternoon. She sets the tea and a plate of warm jam tartlets before her, and they discuss the weather. She bobs a cute curtsey when she’s done and nods a parting and a good afternoon at Iris.

She found it slightly odd to have someone curtsey to her. Sat here in her shabby boots and too-small-pelisse. She almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. Not in cruel jest to the sweet maid’s behaviour- just that in her household, she barely outranked their maids. She helped out with the cooking, the cleaning, as did her sisters.

That didn’t seem to place her worthy of a curtsey. She had no title after all. Was likely never to bare a title or be among nobility.

She drinks some of the excellent tea. A fine rich blend no doubt. She nibbles the corner of a sticky jam tartlet and listens as the carriage clock on the mantel strikes twelve. Dinging softly around the opulent room. Along with the crackling of the fire spitting spewing out embers and ash in the hearth.

She idly awaits company- drains another cup of tea. And stands to better admire the frosted gardens from the big windows. Lifting the scarlet red curtain out of her sight as she admires.

A different maid enters across the room. Clunking the heavy door. “If you please, Miss. I’ll take you to his Lordship. Mr Jomar says he’d do it himself only on account of him getting caught up chatting to the cook.” She explains.

Iris leaves her baskets in the parlour on the table. She goes directly with the girl. Who leads her through the house and out across a courtyard, and points to a little track road down to the working stables. She apologised that she had to skip back to the kitchens to attend to some errands. Iris says it’s quite alright. She can find her way from here.

She walks up the pea-shingle paved road. Seeing the U shaped courtyard ahead, under the stone arch of the gates leading into the stables. Stalls surround the shape of it. Running around the perimeter. She can smell hay and animal sweat and the stench of hops. As she walks closer a repetitive clunking noise rings in her ears. The clatter of wood tumbling onto stone. Coming from the direction she’s intended toward.

She passes under the arch, cool shade of it tickles the back of her neck. She comes into the clearing of the cobblestoned courtyard. Horses stamp and shift in their stalls surrounding the walls. She spies Erland in his stall. Munching on something he’d recently been fed. Carrots most likely.

She comes into plain view of the whole stable- and then she lurches right to a sudden stop. A gasp punched out her lungs. Chest seizing up.

She’s now stood facing a very shirtless Lord.

Chopping logs with a heavy axe. Blade of it glints wicked sharp in the sun as his thick arms swing it over, crossing it over his body to strike sharp down the centre of the log before him on the stand. The wood tumbled and clunked to the ground.

Chest gleaming slipping shimmering with sweat from his exertions. Stood in his obsidian breeches and boots to match, even in the winter cool of the courtyard. His shirt lay discarded on the nearest stall door. Folded cotton crumpled there.

She idly wonders as her eyes take all of his naked state in, why he was doing this himself when he probably had tens of hundreds of servants who could do it for him. She knows she not supposed to look. But she’s seen the bare beauty of him now and her eyes don’t wish to be rid of it-

She didn’t have any concerns that his frame was in any way unimpressive. But seeing him in such a bare manner merely reconfirmed what she already knew. He is broad in the shoulder, wide at the waist.

His chest doesn’t taper it remains a solid stack of muscle. His thick thick build of his arms flex. The trapezius lines slipping outwards from either side of his neck are intimidatingly big. As is the reach from his shoulders down over his pectorals.

He is a hugely broad warrior of a man. Crude. Monumental.

A few seconds have passed since she stumbled onto the sight of him. Though it felt longer. He raises his eyes to the movement of her. Though he hadn’t needed too. He could sense her walking up the front drive to come to him. Felt her presence here ever since she set foot on his land.

He unsticks the heavy axe from where it lodged chipping into the wood block stand below the logs he’s cutting up. He lets it hang down by his side. Grins wickedly across at his guest. Wall of muscular chest panting. Abdominal muscles flexing. His breath spirits silver out his smile up into the bitter air.

His smile is sinful and his eyes are shady with promiscuous motive. “Miss Ashton...” He greets her rakishly.

Fully aware of what the sight of him will do to her. How much it will stir her blood, get her blushing. The potent effect of him enchanting her lust. Dazzling her weak mortal senses.

“Your lordship. Do forgive me. I’d no idea you were- _um_. So-“ Her eyes flicker across to his chest again, darting away quick. But he saw her snatch a look through blushing hot cheeks.

“Informally attired?” He finishes for her confidently.

She gulps and nods. “Yes- I do beg your pardon.” She’s now turned three quarters away from him. Giving him a ample view of her profile. Looking rather like she wants to scamper back to the safety of the house. Those pink cheeks and her flustered breathing that pulses out her neck in a sudden unexpected rush of lust... It gets his temper straining at its hold when he senses it.

It’s captured the side of him that she should absolutely _not_ want to rouse.

He lays the axe down. Standing it against the brick wall near the log shed. Shifts closer. She can hear his boots scrape on the cobbles. Dusted with hay and splintered wood chipping’s from his laborious work. His fine booted soles crackle and shift with it. He brings his shirt into his free hand. Leaves it folded down by his side.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” He seeks smugly.

Her brain malfunctions. Caught on his choice of word. Pleasure. Pleasure. _Pleasure-_

She wills the impertinent thought away.

Feels him coming closer. The way his eyes stab into her coat. Rake along the back of her neck like dragging flint knives being drawn along her skin. She tries not to shiver too much at the not-entirely-unpleasant sensation.

“I just paid a call to deliver some tokens of gratitude from obliged Pembleton residents.” She offers.  
  
  


“There’s _um_. Port and figs in honey. Some partridges. And some very excellent jam... Miss Smith, The Phillips and us Ashton’s all send our compliments.” She babbles.

He chuckles warmly. Stepping ever closer. Sparing her blushes and gazes. He slips the rumpled cotton of his shirt over his head and lets it fall, untucked, down to his thighs.

The open v neck tips to hang between his nipples. Dusky bronze discs of them. And the coarse smattering of dark hair brushes his chest too. She shouldn’t know that about a man.

“That’s very generous of you. I’m very fond of partridge. Do be sure to thank your family for me. For such a thoughtful offering.” He insists in a drawl that gets her smile increasing.

She chuckles. Feeling safer about meeting his eyes now. “Miss Smith was delighted. With your assurance of looking out for the murdering beast. She has decided to forgo the extra bolt on her bedroom door.” Iris explains.

“I fear she’s now quite enamoured with you. She said she means invite you over to take tea, very soon.”

Kylo raises a brow that instantly told Iris how very ridiculous and inconsequential her found the always-flustered Miss Smith.

“I might accept the invitation on the provisory condition that you accompany me. To keep me from beating my head against the wall in sheer desperation.” He smarts.

Iris chuckles lightly. She tries to swallow it down but she can’t.

“She is a little trying.” She confesses. She was a harmless woman. Just admired the sound of her own voice rabbiting on too much. And she fretted about every beast, man, and creature put on this earth. Everything was cause for suspicion with Miss Smith.

“She’s the most trying woman in all of the British Empire.” He declares lowly. His smile crooks up on one side.

Iris thinks for a second. Looking down at her shoes. “I do so hate to disagree with you, your lordship. But I fear that title must instead be awarded to my mother.” She smarts.

He chuckles rightfully loud. It’s warmer than all the winter sunshine that slopes down on them. Crinkles form near his eyes and his divots beside his mouth.

“Anyway-“ She begins. “I should take my leave. I’ve lingered far too long. You must have matters to attend...” She smiles. Dipping into a short curtsey. Flicking her eyes back up to him after she does.

“Nothing so urgent could possibly draw me away the honour of your visit.” He insists. Making unabashed eye contact with her. Face so open and genial. Eyes all melting honey and granite.

“I wouldn’t wish to importune you.” She says crossing her hands and holding them in front of her.

One ink brow curves up. “From my incredibly laborious and eventful morning of, chopping firewood?” He lets her infer her own conclusions.

“Well. I do have errands to take heed of. Back at Westwell.”

He smiles like the devil. Like he knew how Satan himself leers- which he very truly almost does. He’s seen the closest thing this earth knows to a demon, grin at him. White pearly smile so savage and handsome.

“Defer them.” He presses nicely. “I promised you a tour did I not? Come take a ride of Hellford Park with me and Erland.”

Iris swallows. “You wish me to- spend time with you, alone? unchaperoned?” She checks.

His eyes glow with that savage glimmer once more. The one that makes his eyes look like the most melting shade of black imaginable. _Oh yes he did._

“I promise to be the very saintly soul of propriety.” He pledges. Cupping a hand over the black vacuum where his mortal heart once laid in his big chest.

“I won’t stand for indulging in any behaviour on my part if it severely discomforts you.” He vows seriously. She believes him. He was respectful enough to let her truly escape this endeavour if she wanted. He would never inopportune a woman for the benefit his own comforts.

Even if she stirs him up so violently like the way this woman does-

She tries not to follow where his hand lay on his body with her eyes. Tries not to look at that divine sticky chest again. Her head swims with comparisons of marble Greek gods swimming in salty tepid seas. Emerging dripping from the cobalt ocean.

She blushes. Yet again her silly female heart betrays her. She hesitates for a second- she should say no. A polite girl would be a shrinking violet and scurry away at such a bold suggestion.

She should turn her back and apologise profusely, head on back toward the house. She should walk home, the cool air stinging at her hot cheeks. She should go and think about scrubbing their curtains back home. Or arranging flowers. Or donning her apron and helping cook on with peeling the maris pipers in preparation for supper.

She looks at his eyes again. Words fly from her mouth before her brain comprehends how it came to an answer. He truly was an enchanting creature.

“I’d be delighted.” She nods bravely.

It wasn’t what should be done. But it’s what she so desperately wanted to do.

Westwell has had 23 years of her looking after everyone and everything in it. They can miss her for a meagre few hours whilst she finally puts herself first.

“Allow me to briefly adjourn and attire myself correctly. Then I’ll see to having the horses tacked up.” He excuses himself. Smiles all wicked, and turns to head for the doorway in the brick wall near the logs he was cutting up.

She flushed and almost fell faint to a dizzy spell. Seeing his finely muscled back as it lumbered away from her. Slicked with sweat.

She watched the savage blades of his shoulders, as sharp as that axe blade he’d been swinging. Her eyes stuck on the three slashes of scars that rake deep over the left jutting bone hill of his scapula. Where an animals claws had long ago cut and torn into his skin.

If she knew just precisely _how_ long ago- she’d faint.

A time she can’t even comprehend. An age away. An age she’s only studied in books. An age he can moderately remember anymore. It was several centuries past him now.

He remembers towering pine tree tops scraping at the sky. How bitter bitter snow blazed and churned between the tips. The ruddy tang of houses back then cast solidly out of timber and roofed with straw. The smell of the sticky sap bleeding out the wood. The ash from the open fires and the clog of acrid woodsmoke sunk into the fur pelt he wore around his shoulders. The beast that had scarred him on his back and left him to rot away with fever of the wound. Left Kylo clinging desperately onto life by his dirty fingernails.

He found that creature. He sunk his knife into that brutes belly and gutted it. He wore that black pelt with savagely earned pride. The gloom of longhouse where feasts, battles, births and politics were celebrated. The place that reeked of ash, the stench of smoking meat and the sour reek of stale urine from the odiferous tannery, when the frigid wind blew and shuddered into the village in the right direction.

Back breaking labour was crucial for survival. Farming and hunting and warring. Truer dignity in hard work than any of these perfumed dandies of the fashionable ton knew about.

He’d been brought up in those freezing acetous lands. He’d farmed for oats and barley and rye in the summers. Then one winter, he trained as a soldier. Upholding the honour of his family and willing to go and to defend his people.

Then he went to war- His fate was violently and horribly rearranged.

He’d marched right on in to fight a battle from which he’d never return home. Never would he be the same man. He was offered instead, a sweet mercy of a deathless death. And he greedily snatched it with both hands- glutted himself on its chance.

It was all so different back then. Life was so brutal. Compared to the pomp and ridiculous circumstances the narrow minded people in this village are governed ruthlessly by, by things they think matter.

When he thinks of the contrasts to the two societies it makes him sick. All the stuffy airs and graces and endless bowing and scraping. Veiled insults cloaked as compliments. Velvet draped over daggers.

He vastly preferred this world back when it was a more feral one. Atleast then he knew where he stood.

When there were no falsehoods or lies floating out sugared words from simpering sickening smiles. Here, when one thing was said to his face, quite another was hissed behind his back when he turned. Maybe he was just a relic of a time long since over-maybe maybe maybe.

He goes into the stable rooms, where he left his jacket and other attire earlier. Luckily there’s a washroom out here that was used on hunts if the work got bloody. He washes himself down from the basin and jug of cold water, and clears away the salt of his sweat. Pats himself dry and redressed in his fine jacket, white shirt and white cravat. Atop a burgundy waistcoat.

When he steps back out, buttoning his thick wool jacket. Silver buttons blazing proud in the sun, he sees Miss Ashton at Erland’s stall. The stubborn animal nudged into her shoulder again as she strokes his handsome velveteen forehead. Remembering her. Thinking she had more treats to bestow.

He comes across and chides his horse in the Bavarian tongue he was trained by. “Nett Sein. Erland.” Kylo barks across low at his horse as he walks over. _Be kind._

He then adds, chiding him, that he shouldn’t be disrespectful to ladies. Croons to him. Speaking fluently in his own language. Stroking his nose as the horse turns and nibbles at his masters coat shoulder and snuffles his hair with his hot, hay scented breath. Kylo pats the chunky meat of his solid corded neck.

She strokes a hand over his silken mane. Hair harshly stiff and bushy under her gloves. Parted to one side over his neck and shoulders as the animal bows his head down for the handful of oats Kylo held out for him. Erland snuffles them up in a mere matter of seconds. Chews on the cud’s and almost headbutts his master for more.

Miss Ashton laughs. “You were right about his stubborn blood. So I see.”

“One of the most obstinate beasts on four legs.” Kylo promises with a grin.

“Would you mind riding one of our mares, Miss Ashton? They are generally easier of temper.”

“Not at all.” She accepts.

He steps back and urges her over to the next stall. Here, a shimmering white horse awaits them. Brushed coat glistening the way untarnished snow lays sparkling in the sun. Bright and pure.

This horses mane and snout is an ash grey. The same colour bleeds up past her fetlocks. There’s some dappled patches of pebble grey also on her flanks and rear. She was the sweetest mare with the softest temperament. She stays in her stall but gently cautiously seeks Kylo’s hand to eat the food her offered her. He strokes her neck fondly.

“This is Kana. Shortened from the old Norse word for Birch tree.” Kylo’s introducing her. The mares ears twitch with her mentioned name. “So named, if I recall because her coat resembles the colours of the trunk.”

“She’s beautiful.” Iris insists. Rubbing up the flag bone between her eyes. Kana appreciates the caress with an equine little snort.

Across from them. The stable boy has brought Erland out his stable to tack him for their ride. Kylo and Iris stay stroking the sweet white mare. Stood at her stall.

“Do you ride them out often?” She asks.

“Every morning with Erland if I can manage it. Sometimes at night too. If sleep evades me.” He tells. Sleep always evades him. The one curse of immortality.

“This poor old girl deserves as good a chance as any to stretch her legs.” He smiles.

Another stable hand comes out and gently leads the white mare from her stall. She stands quietly as she’s tacked. Erland however? He pounded the cobbled floor with a scraping hoof and was twitching with excitement to be ridden. He bays and snorts and huffs until he gets his way.

When his bridle and bit are slipped on, Kylo steps over and soothingly rubs his shoulder. “You, are an intemperate old beast.” He chides to his horse, as the stable boy lifts the fender to secure the cinch strap around Erland’s strong belly.

After they’ve tacked her mare, the stable boys see to their other work. Bidding them a good ride. Kylo leaves Erland for a moment and steps around Kana to help Miss Ashton safe into the saddle.

He takes her hand as she holds her skirts decently and levies herself up to her horses height via a handy wooden footstool. There is still a shimmering spark of contact when his hand closes around hers to hold. Even though they are both wearing gloves. The thrill of it is wilder and more potent than ever.

She sets herself side-saddle. Takes the reins in her gloved hands. Gets used to the sturdy solid weight of the animal beneath her.

Lord Ren heads back to Erland and hoists himself onto his strong back. In all his tall glory he didn’t need assistance into the saddle.

He leads their walk out under the stone arch of the stables, and into the winter sunshine. He pulls Erland up flush to her and Kana’s side when the path widens out.

They walk a to a slow paced trot through the dewy grass, that follows along the merry ash and taupe brown of the silver and white of birch winter woodland to their right. He was entirely correct about Kana. The sweet horse was gentle and unassuming in her nature.

Iris sighs happily as she sees the sunlight cast an enchanting amber through all those pale trees. The waxy nectar of tulips drifting in the air from the Dutch gardens nearby. It was like something beautiful out of a dream.

“You were right about the beauty of the ride. Your Lordship.” Iris remarks as she watches the amber stripes slope through the birches.

He turns his head and catches that very same view she’d remarked on. He’d seen a million woodlands in his life. Over numerous centuries. And the place he spawned from was between tall pines and a ground eaten up thick with snow. He’s seen every copse of nature on every continent that exists. This view was stale to him. But he appreciates her admiration of it.

“I suppose it is.” He says offhand.

“What made you choose to settle at Hellford Park?” She asks him. “If that’s not an impertinence.” She adds. Smoothing her grey gloved hand over Kana’s neck.

He smiles. “The house seemed of a decent size. The land holdings were vast. And I appreciate having my own space away from society. My worst nightmare is being wedged into a modern townhouse in London. With all the smog and the ton being rammed down my neck. I far prefer the country. The quieter pace of life.” He tells her.

“Easier for hunting and sport...” He adds.

“I feel easier knowing nature is on my doorstep. I need only walk out and be in it.” He explained.

“I can’t bear the thought of a town life. I bless every year that my family haven’t the capital to rent a place in town.” Iris tells him. Probably not something she should admit. But she felt like her honesty was safe with him.

“The most of town I’ve ever seen is a season in Bath when I debuted at sixteen. We managed to stay with my aunt and cousins. I thank heavens we’ve never repeated the experience.” He makes a firm sound of fond agreement.

“I’ve seen the way you take to country life.” Kylo smiles at her. She nods across at him.

“Same as you. Your Lordship. I appreciate the peace and quiet. Able to go and walk in the woods and be where my thoughts and wishes are my own. No one else’s expectations get forced upon me.” She says.

“Nothing I like better to soothe my mind than walking around the Hampshire wilderness...” She comments as they head along a lane under a glade of golden elm trees.

“I hope you don’t going adventuring out after dark, Miss Ashton. Even such tame country places can grow afoul after nightfall.” He warns her. Even in this genial little village he’s glimpsed the vile echelons of scum hereabouts.

“Oh. I never run errands outside Westwell after dark.” She puts his mind at ease. “Mother thinks my evenings are best spent extensively reading of the Mirror of the graces and better improving my embroidery.” She tells him.

He’s honest in his answering remark. Where most men she associated with would call her fine and sensible for indulging in etiquette novels. Kylo can’t think of anything more intrepid.

“I can think of a million better ways in which I’d rather indulge my evenings.” He offers sincerely.

“I don’t tell her that I often escape to my room to read my Johnathan Swift novel and to get a bit of peace away from her and my sisters.” She says with glad derision.

Kylo smiles at her. “A far better use of your time, I’m certain.” He tells her.

“Do you have any family?” She asks. And then she winces. “Sorry if I’m irritating you with nagging questions-“

He smiles. He’ll answer any question she aims his way.

“I did. A long time ago. It’s just me left now.” He imparts.

She glances back at the gigantic house of Hellford. Save for staff, he had no one in it.

“Doesn’t that ever get lonely?” She’s asking.

“Don’t you?” He questions back nicely. Melting eyes catching hers. Sunlight spun them to amber glowing off dark walnut.

She can’t help but nod. She doesn’t have many friends in this world. She has a greek harpy for a mother - talons, scales forked tongue and all. Her sisters were about as dense to understand as a Chelsea boot. Air headed and with no substance. And her father, loving though he is, is usually preoccupied in his study or being bullied down by mother. She doesn’t really have anyone.

“I’ve never been left alone a day in my life. I’m permanently surrounded by noise and people yet- I’ve always felt... lonely.” She admits. Looking down to her hands where she held Kana’s reins.

“It’s a privilege to finally have liberty to be able to express that to another living creature.” She smiles gladly at him.

Kylo looks over at her. Brow furrowed. She does so many things for other people. She cares after every member of her dratted family. And she’s got this two tonne grey weight of sadness pressing down on her shoulders.

It’s no secret he doesn’t care for the piddling and idle emotions of fleeting mere humans. But he _so_ cares for her.

“You never have to feel lonely if you don’t wish too.” He offers.

“You have my confidence. And all that my acquaintance and friendship can offer to you. Miss Ashton.” Whether she likes it or not- she does. She has it. He firmly and fondly tells her so.

“I’m very thankful for it. Vastly thankful.” She promises. “I could use a friend just now. With all the terrible circumstances happening in Pembleton.” She relays with a note of grimness.

Erland snorts. Kylo pats his neck to sooth him. “Yes. The _uh_ \- madman Miss Smith raves about.” He recalls. “I’m sure it is the imaginings of her overworked mind.” He tells.

Iris supposed that was a very accurate statement. Kylo had only met the awful woman once, too. And he already had sussed her flighty panicked character. That spoke volumes of her temperament.

“Not to make mention of the supposed wolf thats said to be stalking these parts...” She adds.

“An exaggerated tale, do you think?” He asks.

“Well. I do subscribe to my fathers notion that wolves did die out centuries ago- but who knows? An animal that big and vicious, I’m all astonishment it hasn’t been spotted before now. This is a farming county. There’s poultry and livestock for the taking. Why would it bother with drunkards in the middle of the forest.”

“Easier to stalk. And pick out- I imagine.” He smiles just a little. His gleaming eyes hold back his many dark secrets.

He hears her inhale a shaky breath. He hears her throat pulsing next to him.

“You know, you shouldn’t be afraid.” He starts. “Of the alleged wolf. If, heaven forfend, there is one.” He surmised.

“Why ever not?” She searches. Face pulled back. A little shocked.

“Because wolves are not just blood thirsty beasts. They are intelligent and sociable animals. They are more likely to be spooked by a human than want to kill them. The reason those men were attacked? They were half clumsy, gone on drink and weakly vulnerable.” He tells.

Iris swallows. Brings Kana to a stop. “Lord Ren...” She gulps. “You talk as if you-“

She takes a deep breath to fortify herself. “As if you know of such a thing...” She finally remarks.

He stops Erland and doesn’t shy - from her glance or her question.

“I know merely how wolves operate. Miss Ashton. Nothing more.” He says openly.

Of course he does. She thinks stupidly. His home. Back in Bavaria. He said it was surrounded by wolves. He’s no doubt seen some people succumb to the packs of them.

There’s silence for a minute as Kana and Erland chew at their bits. Clacking and shifting its crunch in the air. Erland leans his head over and snuffles Kanas snout. The creak of leather eases out in a squeak from The reins in Kylo’s hands.

She nods. Cheeks beating. The shame of foolishness slithering up her spine. “Forgive me-“

“I would if there was something to forgive.” He smiles.

She ducks her head. Cheeks pink as she tips her chin to her chest. She sighs in bliss as she looks out at the open field before them. Before she gets a niggling flare of a brilliant yet stubborn idea in her head.

“For once in my life...” She insists, almost angrily, Kylo’s eyes shift to how she shoves herself, adjusting on Kana’s saddle. She bunches her skirts. Leans back and he sees a flash of a white cotton chemise and pearly wool stockings as she swings her legs over, the both of them now astride the saddle.

“I intend to do something completely and utterly dishonourable and unfeminine.” She says.

Kylo’s smiling at the sight of her skirts draped up almost over her calves where she’s sat on the horse. He watches her adjust the reins in her hands and skip her feet into the solid stirrups.

With a gentle kick into Kana’s flank she braces herself on the horse, as the mare proceeds to lurch into a gallop, breaking into the frosty meadow in front of them. Her blue coat flaps behind her. Kylo smiles after her lead. Adjusts Erland’s reins and spurs him on after her.

For just that afternoon, for just those heart pumping minutes of uninterrupted bliss- Iris feels the sun bleaching onto her face, and the wind stinging and ripping at her hair. She feels her body and her soul stirring. For just those few minutes, she doesn’t feel like a trapped suffocating girl. Like a toy being manoeuvred in the dolls house that was her strict life.

They gallop up the field and through another one. Coming up a trail that rises onto a hill in the sunny wood. She slows down when she gets to the top. Lord Ren catches up behind her. Erland could really get up a speed when he got going.

She comes to a stop where the hill levels out. Looking across all the acres of Hellford park. She’s still winded from the ride. Sun and wind having kissed her cheeks a bright pink. Where she ducked past low branches in the forest, Kylo spies a green leaf nestled captured in her hair. Making her comparable to some frolicking wood nymph.

He draws Erland up by her and Kana’s side. Listens to her panting as they take in the view of Hellford together.

“Truly is a beautiful house, your lordship. I hope you’ll be very happy here.”

“A truly fine prospect.” He agrees. Looking out at all his wealth. All his grandeur and land.

“Finest land holding in all of England I expect.” She smiles. Still panting for breath. He can hear how her blood beats like sweet syrup around her body. He can smell her skin and he is just- a man whose found heaven on earth.

“Indeed it is. Nothing quite like it.” He admits. Iris doesn’t see how he turned to look and admire her rather than the view. Intoxicated by the tug and pulse of the artery her throat. It thunders her neck and it’s all he can hear or think about.

Kissing her. Tasting her neck. Her skin. The subtle perfume of her body. Her caresses.

He might aswell be a man half starved-wild at this point.

They ride back to the stables. Slowly together. Conversing along the way. She changes back to side saddle as they get closer - didn’t wish for his stable hands to catch sight of her and remark on how unladylike she’d been.

Kylo slips off Erland and hands him across to be untracked. He marches up to Kana’s side and takes Iris’s hand to help her slip down from the mares saddle.

Only, fate seems determined to drive them into each other’s arms at every foreseeable opportunity. Her skirts snag on the pommel and this makes her fall onto her feet too fast.

Kylo’s there to catch her. She’s once again, wedged now between Kana’s back and his chest. She thuds down to the ground with a soft “ _oof_.” Escaping her lungs.

That escalated when she looked up and found him so, brilliantly close. He towers over her, he’s twice her width in his shoulders alone. But he’s gazing at her so tenderly. His hand had shot to her waist to steady her outside her coat. The span of it reaches from her ribs almost to her hip.

It’s somehow more dizzying to be nearer him now she’s seen what form lies under those clothes. The sheer immensity of this man.

He looks up into her hair and smiles a tipped up curl of a crooked grin. His fingers reach up and skim away the leaf caught in her hair. She blushes and laughs a little when he shows her.

She touched over the spot his fingers had skimmed. The skin still burned with heat and cold from the leather of his gloves.

“I had the most pleasant afternoon.” She encourages. Swallowing nervously again. He can smell her hot throat. Her hot bare throat and it’s addictive- to be so close as this to his biggest temptation.

“Thankyou very much for your hospitality, Your Lordship.” She adds.

“And you for yours.” He thanks her for the baskets she’d bought. He breaks the trance. Turns back and calls to one of the stable boys to ready the carriage to take Miss Ashton home.

“Oh, please. You needn’t bother. I don’t mind the walk.” She tries to fuss

“I insist on seeing a lady safely home. It is all of five miles from here to Westwell.” He announces. She smiles in gratitude.

He parts with her at the coach door, after it’s brought around. He holds her spare hand as her other clutches at her skirts and she steps up into the scarlet black box of it- to think on all that had passed between them since she first saw this coach mere days ago.

If only she knew how much-

He kisses her hand in parting. “A delight as ever, Miss Ashton. I do hope you visit Hellford again.” He urges.

“As do I.” She beams back. Leaning forwards to look at him through the carriage door. He smiles before he steps away. Hands behind his back again. He nods to the driver, who cracks the whip on the horses and the coach lurches away. Takes her home. Safe away from him.

She passes the ride to Westwell in his comfortable carriage, remarking with a sly smile to herself about the pleasantness of the afternoon. Looking out the window as the carriage shakes and cracks and tumbled speedily along the road, she noticed how the sun is dipping low into a evening sky. Misty purple and burnt peach copper. She wonders if she’s been missed at all.

As soon and she alights the coach, thank’s the driver and slips inside Westwell’s front door. No sooner than she pushes the door shut, flat to her back on the wood to close it. And she is ambushed by her mother.

The foyer is dark save for the amber fire. Daylight dies in the window frames. Here there is gloom waiting for her. Her crushing boa of a life wraps around her neck again.

She is greeted with a pursed thin lipped glare of displeasure. Mother rips herself up to a stand from the armchair by the fire and snaps her book to slam shut. Loudly. Like a slap. Looking across at her daughter.

Happiness shatters in her chest like a glass vase being dropped. The splinters and shards clog up her once happy heart.

“Where in the devil’s name have you been?” She demands to know.

“Paying call to Lord Ren.” Iris says. Moving into the house. Intending for the stairs. She doesn’t wish to be bitten by this poisonous viper. Not tonight. She’s had such a wonderful day to reflect on.

“I beg your pardon?” Her mother remarks.

“You heard me perfectly well.” Iris says flatly.

“I dropped off the basket Mrs Phillips and Miss Smith sent to him in gratitude.” She adds in explanation.

“I can’t think what gratitude they could possibly owe to _that_ man.” She curses.

“Why _do_ you think so ill of him? What possible vexation has he caused you?” Iris accuses.

“Pray tell why do you _praise_ him so?” Her mother narrows her eyes.

“He is a kind man. And he has the phenomenal benefit of having a working brain unlike all the preening idiots I usually have to comport myself in front of.” Iris explains.

“I will not tolerate anymore stupidity. Think of our reputation to uphold. You were gone half of the afternoon. And I’d no clue as to where. And now you’re telling me you were in the company of a man, _unchaperoned?_ ” She shrills.

“Yes I was.” Iris spits out plainly. “And there was no impropriety in it. Before you start accusing me of that.” She adds.

Lifting her skirts and beginning to stomp away up the stairs. Mouth bitter and full of anger dashed with sadness. Mourning her beautiful day.

“Do you have any idea what this could do to us? To our family name? Running around unsupervised with a man like that-”

Iris turns back. Fuming. Hair wild. Eyes bright with rage. Glittering spitfire red from the hearth.

“For once in my life, mother. I _did not_ think! And I was glad of it! I did not _need_ reminding of the fact you use me as a chess piece for this family’s hopes. Seizing my skirts and dragging me from square to square to make sure I catch a man of fortune and hale breeding.” Iris fairly yells. Voice scraping hoarse through her throat.

Her mother stands in the foyer like some grim harbinger of doom in her plum muslin dress that looks black in the gloom. Her face sternly cross and icy at her daughters outburst. Her pale claw of a bony hand gripping the banister.

“You will not associate with him again.” She tells stonily.

“I wrote to Armitage Hux today. He travels back from London tomorrow and I’ve stated he is excessively welcome to come to tea.” She explains.

“You will put on your best dress and make him welcome. And let him entertain the idea of a marriage match. Don’t be a _fool_ Iris. A man like Lord Ren would never wish for your hand. Learn that now and be done with it. It’s time you took our family situation seriously.” She comments with finality.

She takes her hand off the banister and walks away. Words ringing in her ears like knives stabbing at her brain.

Iris’ pounding heart hardens over with grey nausea and glass shards that stab her lungs. Her eyes flood with quivering and filling up of silvery tears.

She slips up the wooden stairs to her room and collapses into great fits of tears. Muffling her sobs with her hand. She wipes off her face and her stinging eyes.

Kylo felt her dread, all those miles away at Hellford Park. He felt it like a punch to the gut. 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drama- gotta love a bit of drama 💕


	7. Savagery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Ren is sure keeping his eyes peeled 👀👀

When he came to her that night, her tears of grief were still drying on her cheeks. Catching in the fires light, like ribbons of sparkling amber.

If he had a soul, it would be crumbling in despair for glimpsing the sight of her like this.

“Oh, My little dove.” He sighs, weary and heart sore for her. She didn’t even have anyone to cry to or to embrace in her sadness. She always had to cry alone.

Tears staining onto the clasping embroidery of her laced pillow. Her supple form curled up into a fitful tense shape on the bed. Her toed off brown boots are strewn on the floor by the end of the bed.

Concern weights down the heavy lentil of his stern brow as he rounds the end of her bed to come closer. His big hand cupping the polished twists of the wood pillar of the mahogany frame. He steps over her boots. Coming to tower over where she rests on the mattress.

She’s still wearing her gown. The ash grey wool she wore earlier today. Her hair is still bound. Though it’s strictness is softened by wisps that have worked their way loose. Spilling over her cheeks and straying across the pillow. Like dark twisted roots.

She won’t wake. She never does. He sets himself carefully on the bed. Feels it give and creak beneath his weight. He watches her rest. Brings his hand up to stroke a thumb across the soft cushion of her damp cheek. Wet and salt clings to his skin.

He whispers to her. “I felt it. I felt your sadness. I felt it reach out to me. Calling to me.”

He leans down and kisses the tear away. When he does, when he tastes that sadness on his lips - a shatter of emotion and memory cracks through him. Like thunder splintering and charring an old oak. He is struck by it. Well and truly.

He can hear her mothers snarls, feel the crush of guilt and righteous anger drowning his sweet little dove. Being told she must obey to her family expectations. Start making them proud. Start thinking of marriage.

He sighs deeply as he pulls away. He didn’t even register the pretty floral of her skin he so loves. Not tonight.

Tonight, he is not a baying monster seeking for blood. He is a suitor who has deeply concerned, rushed to her side as he felt the worst woes of his lover.

He felt her despair. Her dying hope. He felt the waning happiness of their day wither. Like a dried flower hardening up in the frost or the heat. Seizing up it’s bright petals. Or shedding them. He’s felt how her family’s expectations strip her bare and leave her shredded and bruised.

Here, he just feels his jaw grit at the rage of it all. He grows wilder with anger. Can feel the black of it, thick like rotten honey, bleeding flushing into his veins.

“I wonder, do you feel me too? Are you so struck by all the things I perceive?” He asks to her. Not intending at all for his questions to be answered.

Their bond is strong - this cannot be denied. It’s tug engulfed them both from the second their eyes met. That blazing dazzling storm that took his breath away. The tempest of her influence quakes inside his chest.

Yet this...fondness, for her. A mere mortal. A simple, human girl. It is not so perishable. To look upon the last love and bond he has felt in his life, it seems so dangerously frail in comparison. Adoring her is like cherishing a birds eggshell. Like a faint ember glowing, about to extinguish. Yearning and waiting to be made bright.

Humans. All of them are so fleeting. So quick to bud and even quicker to fade. Like a dying little spark. Extinguished before it barely even thrives.

He can feel this spirit. This entwining of their souls. This dense entanglement of emotion. Can sense how it hungers to grow. Like him; it’s a bloodthirsty beast. Demands heart and cartilage and inky black ichor of blood to sustain it.

His yearning is more than he ever thought. And he knows how she wants it desperately also. _Wants him._ Their feelings have found symmetry in each other. This is the first time a woman has been more to him than a collection of veins to drink off.

“I confess; I care not if you can sense me yet. Because I sensed you the minute I saw you, Iris Ashton. And now I feel how trapped you are.” He explains softly.

“Little Dove. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to see you freed.” He promises.

He’s stroking her hair back off her face. Trying to soothe away the crinkling frown in her brow. The one that spoke highly of her turmoil.

“I would rip those pathetic beings you call relatives to pieces for making you suffer like this. I wouldn’t even drink them. Dove. I’d kill purely for the pleasure and the sport of it.” He pledges.

Somewhere in his mind, faintly, upon a distant echo of an echo, he can hear his makers voice. He can hear Draegan calling him a savage, chiding him for those words. He always was the one between the two, blessed with more leniency.

“Your mother is desperately trying to keep us apart. It will not be so. I will _not_ stand for it.” He confesses.

“I will not.” He makes plain. Shakes his head. His words are quiet venom with the resolute strength of iron, but he’s softly caressing her cheek. Taking away all the tears and salty sadness with his fingertips.

“I have a foul temper and when people deny me the things I want. They will inevitably lose.” He growls.

He will kill. Maim. Slaughter and hunt without any whiff of so called or feared consequences. He’s a vampire. He’s above emotion. He does not subscribe to petty human clemency. There is no point in mercy being instilled in such savage beasts, after all. It would wither and die in the face of all the foul things he’s committed. The gore. The pain. The massacres. The bloodlust.

“I came tonight because you cried out for me. You cloud up every moment in my head. You live behind my closed eyelids when I rest at night...” He expresses.

He reaches his hand to cover her collarbone. Very close to the space over her heart. Warm skin soothes his icy palm. It’s been so long since he felt the flurry and flush of warmth. He can feel the quivering muscle tremble and tick under her skin. Gushes and guides her blood. The rattle of it pulses and echos through her vulnerable bones.

The fragility of her tiny timpani heart, beating away her time.

“And now your body beats for me. Each pump of your heart I can hear; and it sounds like it’s calling out my name. And I will always answer to it.” He promises. “I cannot ignore it, even should I wish too.”

He cannot fathom the enormity of this strangle hold she has across him. He can only nurture it’s budding into being. He will help blossom and thrive, whatever this may be.

He quirks a slight tip of a smile. It breaks the stoic nature of his scowl hardened face. Like strong waves being dashed on the rocks. It yielded.

“When I think back upon you sitting astride Kana today, it makes me smile. I had not thought you to be such a wild creature so ready to dash the rules.” He says in mirth.

He’d only looked at her and seen the etiquette she adheres too. He was pleasantly surprised to find she was no shrinking violet. He’s enamoured with uncovering more such stubborn wilderness within her.

“How glad I am for it. That little spit of fiery spirit that not even your foul mother can hope to tame. I’ve always been so enamoured with wild things.” He smiles.

He rubs his thumb across her forehead. His own brow creases when he feels the tremble and agony of her aching head. The raw sting of her red eyes. He rubs until that grey nimbus of her pain passes away. Like smoke on the gentle breeze. He soothes it away.

He is sure to put vastly happier thoughts into her head. Plants them there like seeds ready to sprout. He helps her recall every smile they’ve shared. Every ghost of a touch. Every look of their eyes clashing that sent rattles of desire wracking down her spine. His too, though she had no clue as to the potency of her charms.

No clue whatsoever- it’s one of his favourite things about her. Here is a power she doesn’t even know she wields. He will gladly instruct her to see it used.

He lets her see them this afternoon. Riding side by side in the frosty sunshine. Stroking the horses in their stalls. The way he caught her and reeled her in when she slipped off Kana’s back. He lets that warm happiness flow through her like golden ambrosia. The sweet honey nectar of happiness they share together.

He will have more. He will make it so.

He feels how her body is growing colder. He twists around and sees the fire in her hearth is crumbling low. Barely sustained. He crosses and sees to it. Stokes it with the iron poker and piles on more logs to see her kept warm.

Silently he walks back to the bed, to her side. Pulls up the fluffy eiderdown over her where it lay crumpled at her feet. The feathery down of it rumples and crushes and he tucks it around her prone body. Her human well-being, hangs loosely by a fine thread compared to his stronger senses.

He exhaled an amused sound to himself. “And they say I am the creature who bears no soul.” He speaks in detriment to his caring touches.

But so long as he is near, he will not see her suffer. From cold. From sadness. From anything that may ail her.

He has seen worse things than his own kind being blights upon humans. He’s witnessed plagues, wars, outbreaks of diseases too foul to name. The awful crippling frailty of suffering a human existence.

He places his hand on her elbow, atop the covers he shrouded her in. Her dreams eased by his influence. Her strains and stresses plucked away by his hands. He could do more than merely enchant her senses. He could alter them. Make her witness things if he wished to.

“How is it a creature like me can find such solace in even being near you.” He asks gently. Big fingertips of his grooming through her hair. Feeling the spun-bronze soft of it combing through his fingers.

He may never have an answer to that musing. An eternal query for him to ponder over through his ages. All he knows, is that he won’t be kept apart from her. Not for anyone’s wishes.

He stays until a cresting red-gold dawn. Blood and gold copper coins, spill slanted across the sky. The birds outside in Westwell’s meagre garden begin their song to herald to the new day.

He leaves her. Parts with a kiss to her cheek and before he slips from her sight and off into that blaze of a dawn, he leaves his initialled kerchief crumpled up in her hand.

The thought as to her confusion of how it got there, will make him smile. Now she has a token of him. That happy thought keeps him smug in temper, and buoyant for the whole day. He hopes it will jab at her acerbic mother.

Should teach her that _no one_ stands in Lord Ren’s path. And even fewer live to tell the tale of having done so.

~

Iris really did applaud her mothers cruel sense of efficiency. Not but the next day, and Sergeant Armitage Hux and Mrs Hux call at Westwell to take tea.

As they alight from their carriage, Iris is sat at the window armchair. Watching their newcomers. A flash of brilliant red catches her eye, stark in the icy landscape of the frosted green and creamy cotswold stone gravel drive.

He wore his full ceremonial uniform under his black cape. Wool coat the shade of split veins. On his head, covering the copper of his short hair, sits a cocked half moon army hat. Fluffy red and white plumage darts up, sprouting from one side. Blood spattered on snowy doves feathers. The ultimate homage to war.

He looks terribly neat and well groomed. Meticulously so. Coat brushed. His cape is spotless. His white breeches are about as pristine as the snow that fell around the estate last night. His black boots gleam. Freshly polished and waxed. Iris bites her tongue when she sees he’s fully dressed for battle. Even his gold rapier sword hangs at his side. Bumping against his hip.

Hux turns and helps his mother down from the carriage. She is a stout woman of late age, with greying hair and a face that always looks pinched. Her pale face hidden in her frilly bonnet. A ruffled frill secured around her neck. A chemisette collar of rippled muslin, peaking in cresting white waves. Tied in a bow around her neck. Brushing under her chin. Collar starched and stiff. Holding her chin precariously high. Incredibly precocious.

Then again, the woman did always adore and admire looking down upon people. Haughtily peering down on her lessers.

Much of her dress is covered by her deep plum pelisse. She has lilac gloves on and is pinching her skirts up. Afraid of the mud. Sniffing in disdain at muddying her rose pink and mauve half boots with it. Iris shuts her book with a harsh snap. A sigh leaves her lips.

She sets her book aside. Mother appears in the parlour. Lifts up the arched curtain to better glimpse at their guests. She turns a casting eye over Iris’s dress.

“Your skirts are wrinkled and your hair is loose at the back. Fix it.” She instructs snappily with quick hurrying. Before turning back to seat herself elegantly on the settee opposite.

Their parlour was not quite the finest room in Britain. But it was cosy. Heavy blue velvet drapes line the windows with gold tassels trimmed on their edges. There is upholstered walnut settees and arm chairs with white and pink rosebud pattern on the seats.

The fire is lit and roaring amber in the austere grey of the stone hearth surround. Mother arranged an ostentatious vase of tall spilling blooms on the French end table across the room, by the door. Perfuming the air with violets and bluebells. Sugared fruit of exotic variety lay in the only silver bowl they have in the house. Polished especially. Desperate to show off their finery.

Mother is fussing with the crocheted lace doily on the table. Tugging it straight. Setting her grey satin skirts to fold nicely and neat around her knees. Tugging on her finest shawl around her shoulders. Hissing at Iris to set her legs straight. For she always sat most uncommonly. With one knee folded under the other.

Iris is in the upholstered linen armchair opposite to the settee. In the chair has seen better years. A twin set. They creak and crack under her weight. But it’s always done that ever since she was a child. It’s her favourite spot. The light is adequate for reading. Until Posy or Flora come marching in and clamour and demand the chair for they have to fix up their bonnets for church on Sunday. Heaven forfend they are seen out in the same bonnet twice.

Luckily today they preen and fuss in the parlour mirror before the housekeeper shows their guests into the front parlour. Posy is in a duck egg blue with a green ribbon at her waist. Flora is almost matching in a cotton white with a peony pink ribbon. They preen a moment longer until the door handle cracks and twists across the room. The two littlest Ashton’s dart quickly to take their places. Squeaking with giddy excitement. Plonking artlessly onto the furniture.

Iris’s mother frowns at her eldest daughters dour smile. She’d tugged her out of bed nearly at dawn this morning. Ordered her up. To bathe and wash and then dress her hair for Hux’s call.  
  


Laced her tight into stays and her whisper-blue silk dress. Barely blue. Like a sky just turning at twilight. It had three quarter sleeves and handsome train. It it showed off the prettiness of her neck and shoulders. Especially when she wore her pearl sapphire earrings. They sparkle all across her neck.

She puts down her book on the end table. And looks up into the parlour doorway as Mrs Hux enters, preceding her son. Their stout almost-elderly matron of a housekeeper, Simpson, opens the door to them and curtseys. Announcing them. “Maratella Hux and Sergeant Hux. If you please, Ma’am.”

Maratella glides in first. Still with her parasol hooked upon the crook of her arm. She snaps her fingers at Simpson to take it and her bonnet.

“I would have disrobed more in the hall. But your entryway is most drafty and I do so fear getting dust on my bonnet. For it will never be gotten out easy in all this fine lace.” Simpson takes her bonnet and her parasol off her. She curtseys to Caroline.

“Mrs Ashton. You do keep such a snug parlour.” And then she turns and offhandedly stresses Posy, Flora and Iris. The whole bouquet. As if suddenly surprised they’re all here. “ _Oh_. And I dare say such a pretty flock of gels.” She compliments.

“You remember my youngest’s. Posy and Flora. And of course, Iris. My eldest.”

Hux nods and lays particular care in Iris’s intended direction. He turns back to Mrs Ashton.

“I feel I must ride into town to immediately fetch the constable. Ma’am. You have been charged with a criminally beautiful set of daughters. Mrs Ashton.” Hux flatters. With an easy charm of a smile.

Two thirds of the Ashton bouquet giggle wildly, enamoured with the praise. The remaining third bites her tongue to guard it. To keep from rolling her eyes.

“You are very good, Sir. Please. Do come, be seated. I have rung for tea.” Mrs Ashton floats delicately to retake her seat. Mrs Hux daintily comports herself next to her friend.

Armitage remains stood. Arms tugged behind. Sword clanging his belt where he stands with a jaunt to one hip one leg kicked out.

“How are you? My dear Mrs Ashton...” Maratella greets. Taking Caroline’s hands into her own. She wore spotless calfskin gloves. Before she unbuttons the pearl fastenings and makes a show of peeling the expensive things off her tubby hands. Delicately pinching each fingertip and caressing the thing off her hand like she was doing it for exaggerated show. She wasn’t. She was merely acting elegantly as she thought she must.

“I am in good health. I thank you Mrs Hux.” She answers. “Your Armitage looks extremely well. London air must agree with you, Sir?” Mother simpers.

“It did serve me most splendidly. Ma’am. But I am more than pleased to be home. And most thankful for your invitation.” He bows politely and his sea foam green eyes flicker over to find Iris. She smiles meagrely at him, averts her gaze.

He cuts the figure of a tall man standing there, behind his short mother with his hands crossed precisely behind his back. Trying to make his lean chest look impressive with all his gleaming medals and polished gold buttons resting stitched to their black braiding wool patches. Soot. Gold. And blood. All in one uniform.

Armitage Hux had missed the main war of late. The Napoleonic wars which happened of 1815, just this last year gone. Iris wondered if Hux really ever equated the finery of such a uniform, with real true war.

Here he is. Trussed up like a clockwork toy-soldier. With his boots shining and his composure spotless. He’s a young man who has not seen the full horror of war. Iris can’t exactly boast of knowing any more than he. But his uniform spoke of such hope. Time will tell if he can seize the bravery needed to march onto a battlefield.

“Iris looks exceedingly well. Do you not think so Armitage?” His mother urges.

“Indeed she does. Most handsome.” Hux says to the matronly mama’s. But he’s smiling right at her. He crosses the few short steps to the unoccupied twin chair where she’s sat by the window. Gracefully deposits himself into the chair.

Iris takes a subtle breath before she turns towards him. Sat demurely with her hands clasped on her knees and her back straight. When all she really wants to do is lounge. And slouch. And do anything to put him off the idea of marriage.

She was doomed to its sentence. She’d have rather sat here today and stuck pins in her eyes. Rather than conform to conversations about the weather, the local gossip, the tea or the snow outside. When all their mothers were really trying to arrange, was, when it boiled down to it? A forced mating ritual between the country gentry.

The way Mama and Mrs Hux are peering at them from their settee, is like they can already envisage the wedding clothes. And the names for the Hux babe they want to see, soiling in its cloth, and squalling loudly it’s bassinet.

Iris is sick to death of all this match making- but. She is the eldest Miss Ashton. She persists. When all she wants is to flee the room screaming.

“How did you find London this time of year? Must be miserably cold and busy.” Iris seeks.

“Yes. It was rather. Lucky my visit didn’t extend for too long. I am not so enamoured of city living. The society may be fine and resplendent. I did not suffer for a dinner invite the whole time I was in town. But the lifestyle suits me very ill. I much prefer my time spent back here at Walford.” He tells.

“And how is your regiment?” She enquires. He answers. They talk about his militia training. His fellow officers. His sword. His commission. They just lapse to the weather. When the door handle creaks again and in comes their procession of maids with the tea and cake.

Assam tea with a side of Cooks buttery baked ginger biscuits. Seed cake, and finger sandwiches. Made of fluffy pillow soft white bread. Filled with sliced tongue, or ham, with cornichon or yellow piccalilli.

Cook has even made her violet macarons. Gorgeous silky little round cakes of smooth, bright purple. Wedged either side of cloying sweet ganache. Almonds and sugar and all things made sweet with violet essence.

Iris knew mother must’ve gone through a fair amount of their family budget for such an indulgent French fancy. Sugar and eggs and coconut didn’t come cheap. Of course she would pour every hope and penny farthing they had spare into this venture. Anything to catch a suitor.

Caroline pours, and Julia hands around the cups. Leaves a macaron perched on Iris’s saucer. Waggles her brows at Iris, poking with good natured chiding fun for Hux, who was sat opposite her. Looking most keen.

Iris sips her tea from her blue and white spode cup and pays their silly maid no mind. Just because they both flutter eyes at anything of Male born, with nice thighs framed by their breeches.

He’s a soldier too? The maids will state that every romantic girl must get her heart broke by a soldier, just the once.

Hux sets his tea on the end table between them. Leaning a tad closer to initiate more intimate conversation.

“Do forgive my speaking bluntly, Miss Ashton. But I believe it is brightening up. Would you care to take a turn on the lawn with me?” He seeks. They had finished their tea. After all. And she must be polite.

“I’d be delighted to. Sergeant Hux.” She accepts. She stands and deposits her empty teacup down. He tells their Mothers of their plan. He sees Iris into the cold foyer and they pull on their coats. She wished she could find something repulsive in him. But really, he is a gentleman. He holds the door. Helps her into her pelisse. He’s not a horrible suitor. Maybe if he was she could hate him more keenly. 

She wished she could be repulsed by his every action and snobbery. But he is, genial. He smiles warmly at her.

He takes her arm when they get outside. They walk along the drive in companionable, yet slightly awkward silence. Iris just knows their mothers will be fussing like clucking hens at the parlour window watching them. Planning a wedding for the spring after a suitably long engagement. Posy and Flora will be marvelling at every barest touch they share.

_‘Did you see how he took your arm?’_ Or _‘How he doted upon you... I should so like for a man to hold a door like that for me.’_

Hux breaks the silence. They walk arm-in-arm around the curvature of the frozen pond.

“I know men aren’t supposed to be appraised of such matters. Miss Ashton. And if you’ll forgive me, I shall speak plainly-“ He declares to her.

He brings them to a stop. Ten to rly reaches out. His gloved fingers take her hand. She admires it. The plumage on his hat is battered in the wild wind. The only sounds she can hear is her bonnet ribbons fluttering and snapping on the wind. The birdsong chipping sweetly at her ears. The terrified drum of her heart.

“I came here today with the express purpose and intention of paying court to you, Iris.” He tells her. A hopeful smile on his lips.

His eyes crinkle at the corners with hope. His stark inky cape flaps on the breeze. She smells wool and boot polish. Stuck on the frosty landscape that glittered in his eyes.

Her chest breaks. Crushing in on itself.

She looks up into his face. The sun kissed gold upon her icy-white cheeks. Red tinted from the cold breeze. She swallows. Tipping her head slightly back so she can see his face past the woven peak of her bonnet.

Her mouth gapes and she looks down where he’s holding her hand- and it doesn’t feel _right_.

She feels like she wants to burst. Needles of hot and ice cold stab at her ribs like ferocious ten thousand little knives. She wants to be sick or run away. This isn’t the pair of hands that should be holding hers.

Sergeant Hux is terribly nice. Courteous and well bred. And more wealthy than her. But- but he’s _not_...

Lord Ren’s face strikes at her mind with so much power. She almost loses her breath. And her footing. She regains her composure. Even though it feels like something just yanked up inside her chest and tore away her lungs from where they are joined to her throat.

She plasters on a false meek smile.

“I see...” She remarks. Anything more witty or feeling was beyond her. She felt like soon, she’d fade into the air, like smoke. Just drift away.

“I know it is the especial wish of your mother, aswell as mine, that we are to consider each other as potential spouses. And I would very much- I should very much like to spend more time with you, if you’ve no objection?” He asks. Still clasping her hand.

“You are kind sir...” She stutters breath around the words. “Your attentions would be most welcome.” She lies.

She feels rotten.

“I know we know a little of each other. I believe there is some fondness between us. That could grow into respect, and, and possibly- one day, maybe more than that.” He approaches cautiously.

She nods. “You speak very bluntly of such matters. Sergeant Hux.” She says. He speaks as if they are already truths, come into fruition.

“I merely speak what is present. Miss Ashton. My- words are not finely crafted or driven by passion. They do not fall prettily. I am no astounding orator. Nor poet. But I do so believe that we might have a chance of making each other passably happy.” He declares once again.

“You shall never want for anything should we marry. You’d be a Sergeants wife and all that is offered it it’s income. I would treat you dearly, and- admire you as any husband should whilst you see to raising our offspring. These are, after all, matters that fall rightly to women.” He adds.

“Yes, indeed.” She guards her tongue before it becomes uncivil.

“We are invited to the Elton’s musicale, two nights forth. Thursday next. Would you do me the honour of your hand in the invite?” He seeks.

“Well. I-“ she swallows the sticky grey lump in her throat. How she’d love to be selfish and refuse. Her eyes still rimmed and raw from crying over all this last night. Heart sore. A great crack splintering through the middle of it like ancient rusted clay pottery. Her heart so badly wants anything- something more. Someone else.

She can’t do it. Mother would have her crucified. She wants her sisters to have a better comfort in life than what she’s had to suffer with being the family puppet. She wants her father to have new clothes and not have to worry. She wants to see Westwell safe from the bailiffs. 

“I should be thrilled to attend.” She smiles. Her shattered heart crumbles that little bit more. Morphs into a wet mush of clay. Drowned by disappointment.

This wasn’t for her benefit- it’s for everyone else’s. And that was no reason to marry. She believes first and foremost in living for herself. Iris so badly wants to live for herself. To be her own person. She does not have that luxury and it’s suffocating.

She agreed because it was polite. Because he was a genial man and she didn’t wish him upset when he’s done nothing wrong, but let himself be manoeuvred into matrimony by his mother.  
  


She agreed. For her sisters. For her father. Definitely _not_ for her mother though. She doesn’t deserve even an ounce of her thoughts or considerations.

She agrees, even though all of Hampshire society knew that the musical performed by the Elton’s made all the local dogs howl. Even though several ‘accomplished’ young ladies of the ton, played their instruments so ill, everyone swore they could hear the thud of the long deceased composer banging their skull in lamentation and sheer agony on the lid of their coffin.

Even though she’ll be sat next to a man who has promised only to love her dearly. He is a nice man. That is simply it. She feels unworthy and ignorant. She doesn’t want the things she’s supposed too.

She’s overwhelmed. Her head is spinning, and her mouth as sticky dry as a chasm of sand. They’re not even courting properly, or engaged and she wants to pick up her skirts and flee across the horizon. She wants to run. To breathe. To be free from this nice courtesy that she doesn’t want.

She wants more out of her life than that of being a broodmare of a sergeants wife. The expectations don’t stop the day she says ‘I do.’ The fetid things will live on and on. Until she becomes the perfect bride. Then the most perfect housekeeper slash wife. Then a doting mother to a child she’s sure she doesn’t want. Fathered by a man who loves her with lukewarm and polite affection.

Can a soul really be satisfied by such a light caress of passion?

Hers is begging and screaming for more. She’s read in books about exotic cities and lands. Blue blue, so very blue seas and oceans, vaster than her comprehension. Wide wide skies filled with sunsets she could only dream of glimpsing at.

She’s read of snowy mountains and thick pine woodland. Air full of sap and snow. Of sunny cities entirely made out of blue bricks in Morocco. Or ones in Asia painted the entire street rosebud pink just for one visiting dignitary.

She’s heard teasing dribbles of exotic accents and tastes and cultures. She wants to see the bursting heated streets lined with saccharine Mango trees in India. Perfume of it in the air, of spices and sweetness. Wants to see the terracotta catholic loud renaissance of Florence. She wanted to see Castles and chateaus and forts and grand ballrooms. And American railways across the plains of the wild west and-

She’ll never have any of those things. Not a one. Her future was written and decided. And it is appearing bleak.

She thirsts and wants things she’ll never see. Such opulence in the world out there. And instead? She’ll be manacled to a husband and the children and the stove in this tiny savage spit of a village. Until old age and death comes to take her away. Return her to the heat and rot of earth and maggots to help fade her to nothing. Until all that remains of her, is dirty bones and her loved one’s scraps of memories.

Hux smiles. Brings her hand up to lay a gentle kiss upon her glove. “I anticipate it eagerly.” He says. She offers a wobbly smile that she tries to make stand strong.

She can feel eyes stabbing into her back - most likely from the direction of the parlour window. Mama and Mrs Hux stood at the parlours front facing windows. Appraising their fine match.

But there’s something else- something that raises the hairs on the back of her neck. Something altogether much more unwholesome. She feels a cold chill burst and slither up her spine. Horribly slow.

Hux has taken her palm to place it in his elbow once again. And they wander now around the rest of the pond. He remarks how beautiful the great spreading horse chestnut tree must be in spring. Iris smiles her agreement.

Peering around. Everywhere in her garden she looked, all was empty. She can’t see their gardener, Higgins, trimming verges or shrubbery. She looks between the copses of the vast spread of trees that shield her view, past the shrubs and the neat hedges. There was nothing. They were the only two people outside the house, out here.

So why does Iris feel as if they _aren’t?_

Her eyes catch on the bare mulberry tree, the sprawling trunk is bare and black. Like dead curled up spiders legs. Swaying in the breeze.

A black shape sits in that tree. A raven or a jackdaw bird possibly. Onyx black. Curling feet and a sharp inky beak. Fixated its beady glittering honey-black eyes on the both of them. Not moving an inch. Hunched and peering down over them.

Iris looks at it for a long moment. Watches the wind ruffling it’s feathers. It stays fixing its look on her. And it doesn’t move. Not scared. Not at all intimidated by her presence.

Hux jolts her out of her gawping at an unsuspecting bird. It gives a scratchy caw of a call, and spreads its flapping great wings. Soars up into the icy soft of the pearl sky and soars away over the house.

“Miss Ashton?” Hux asks again. A tad louder to capture her attention.

“Forgive me. Lost in my thoughts...” She laughs explains in mirth, turns back and smiles to him. He smiles awkwardly and ducks his head. Discusses the weather with her once again.

They head back into the house for more tea. Caroline gives Iris such a sickly smile when they come back into the room.

Hux announces to Mrs Ashton that he should like to pay call to Iris and escort her to the Musicale next week. Mrs Ashton accepts delightedly.

Mrs Hux adds onto that enjoyment. “Why, we should get a party together. Such a merry gathering! The Ashton’s and the Hux’s shall _all_ attend. You know we have two carriages, Mrs Ashton. Hux may escort all your lovely daughters. And you and Mr Ashton May ride with me and Brendol.” She organised with a giddy grin. Tapping her companions knee.

Iris stands there next to Hux. Feeling very much as if her life is being lived for her. She has no choice in the matter. She is chattel.

Thankfully, after arranging the outing. Maratella and Hux take their leave. They are going on into Pembleton for a general perusal. And Hux needs more boot polish. And she is in desperate need of new ribbons for her hat. Iris shrewdly eyes the hefty bonnet on the woman’s head, groaning under the weight of lace and ribbons and muslin.

Hux kisses her hand again. Bows to her before he leaves. Iris swallows nervously. But doesn’t let her expression betray it. Flora and Posy giggle and whisper to each other. Flourishing into gossip as he leaves the room.

Iris stands looking at the door for a second after it’s shut. Mother sees them off to the front door.

Iris waits to hear the latch on the front door go. When she does she strides quickly for the parlour door, she yanks it open and tears across the foyer and upstairs. Her feet loudly slap each step as she holds her skirts bunched in her fingers.

When she gets to her room she throws the door open with such ferocity the door handle smacks loudly to the wall. She starts getting at the fastenings of her dress. Unloops them and manages to get down to her chemise and her stays. She throws the fine dress away to crumple to her bed. It balloons on the air and floats gently down. Mourning the loss of being worn.

She is at her wardrobe, ruffling through angrily. She’s so breathless. Her lungs are not getting air. Why can’t she breathe? Her mind is racing a million miles a minute. She’s sweaty and clammy and her temples are pounding straining pulsing. Every heartbeat hurts her head. Throat clawing shut.

She won’t cry. She wilfully clamps her teeth shut- _she won’t._

She skips herself into her simple beige muslin dress. And shoved her arms through the old wool blue pelisse. Stabs her feet into her boots. Heads back downstairs with her scarf to hand. Every nerve balances on the precise of a knifes edge.

She gets to the front door when her mother appears, peering into the hallway from the parlour doorway. “Precisely where do you think you’re going?” She seeks. Frowning. Face pulled into a scowl.

“I’ve done my duty for today surely. Have I not? What more do you want from me. I’m done parading myself like a witless idiot. I need a walk and some air.” She offers curtly. Slipping out the front door.

Slamming it shut behind her before her mothers next shrill words pierce her ears. No doubt cursing her daughter for daring to have such an insulting commodity as a functioning brain.

She walks quick. Off up the front drive. Let’s the sting of cold rip at her eyes and her cheeks. Taking deep dragging breaths. It feels like she’d swallowed an entire ream of dressmakers pins. Stabbing and squeezing more pain into her.

She puffs and pants and finally feels like she’s gained some breathing space. Coming into the woods near Westwell and shuts her eyes and lets the sounds soothe her frayed self.

The wood pigeons. A cuckoo’s call. The hiss of leaves scratching against their branches in the wind. High above. The crunch of her boots on twigs and frosted leaves mushed underfoot.

The tactile scratch of her gloves hands scraping across the rough bark of trees around her. She leans back against one of them. Looks up at it’s dead brown leaves. Elm tree.

It’s nice to let something sturdy take her weight for once. She doesn’t often have that luxury.

She regains control of her senses. Of her ragged breath and thumping heart. The cold wind wraps around her snugly. Letting her envelope herself in this silence. Breath escapes silver and wispy from her lips.

A twig snaps far off in the tree’s-

Her eyes shoot open. Scanning all around. Sickly bile rising to the back of her throat. She steps away from the elm tree and lets her eyes flicker all around the woodland. Over the ash brown of the trees and the brush of golden leaves mingled with crystals of frost on the ground.

She turns her head around and then loses her breath. Except this time, it is not of her own making.

There is a dark shape looming out of the trees. A big shape. A monstrous shape. A big meaty tangle of black-grey smudged fur. Pointed ears, a long snout. Eyes standing stark. Eyes that are more golden than a tuscan sun.

A wolf.

She watches as this beast assesses her from afar. Gently picking its paws over the foliage and mess of brittle twigs and mud on the wood floor. It’s paws were as big as dinner plates. It’s not baring it’s teeth at her. She imagines those teeth are bigger and sharper than most silver daggers or pocket knives.

It’s ears are swivelled in her direction. Eyes fixed on her too.

She stays still. Frozen to the spot she’s rooted too. Trying not to tremble in fear as tears, hot and molten silver, fill stinging at her eyes. She shivers with the ache of staying so still. Not daring to move one muscle.

This is the beast that’s been attacking the soused farmhands. The one that’s been hunting for blood. She doesn’t quite appreciate how much of a true statement that is.

When it’s about a foot away from her- it suddenly stops. Raises its lowered head. She sees the long line of its shaggy neck. Fur shining the shade of matte coal. It regards her with casual concern. It’s not growling. Or stalking her every move.

She stops holding such tension in her body. She’s used to the wolf hounds they have on the farm. Shaggy slobbering lumbering dogs who go insane for the dried liver, and fresh bones cook saves for them when she had a haunch of pork.

She remembers how their dogs go apoplectic for them. Gnawing at the fresh gummy blood and meat on those bones. She swallows at the not so appropriate visual of bloodied bones, right at this second. When she could have her throat ripped open by this savage wolf.

She watches as it comes closer by two steps from those big lethal paws. Then it sits.

She swallows. The way she knows canines. Sitting is not a sign of a rabid beast baying for blood.

_“You know, you shouldn’t be afraid._ ” Lord Ren’s voice ricochets through her head. Like a distant echo. Smoke on the air. Did she imagine it, or recall it?

What else was it he had said? She can vaguely recall. “ _Wolves are not just blood thirsty beasts. They are intelligent and sociable animals. They are more likely to be spooked by a human than want to kill them.”_

So she does the only thing she can think of. Maybe it’s foolish. Maybe she’s putting herself in greater danger? But the wolf’s tranquility makes her brave.

She makes herself look less like a threat. Slowly sinks to a crouch, joining it. Her knees stab into the frosty ground as she sinks down. Coming eye to eye with the creature.

So close now she can see the various flecks of honey in its eyes. Can see every strand of fur where they stand rigid from its sleekly shaggy coat.

She rests fully on her bent knees. Damning her dress. Dancing the wet frost and mud bleeding into her dress. She tilts her slightly head at the wolf.

“Where did you come from then?” She asks it. Seeing the huge ears turn to her.

Where she’s crouched, it’s almost taller than her, sat down. On all fours it would have come up well past her hip she’d imagine. It was no stretch to perceive how this could be the creature that’s been attacking men around these parts of late. It is a brutely sized beast.

Meaty shoulders, a slim body, long strong legs and a powerful tail. Immense and strong.

“I know I should most likely be scared of a creature like you.... But you don’t seem very dangerous, to me... I’m sure if you were hungry enough to kill me you would’ve done so by now.” She counters to it.

It tilts his head and licks its chops. Flashes her the ivory sabres that it had for teeth. She looks down to it’s intimidating big paws. The claws almost bigger than her fingers. Another flurry of fear shivers through her.

“Are you the only one of your kind? You must be lonely. Are there any more of you hereabouts?...” She seeks. Wobbly voice straightening out when she unknots her tongue.

The wolf just sits. And watches her. Doesn’t move. Just looks.

Those gold eyes harrowing in their ferocity. She feels like they burn her. Yet. Why does she feel like she’s seen those buttery-honey eyes once or twice before-

She must be mad. They should call the doctor to come take her away to the nearest mental institution and pin her into a straight jacket. Here she is sat talking to a _wolf_.

“I know better than any what being lonely is like I suppose...” She adds softly.

Maybe she is insane. She has the oddest inclination- she reaches up. But not before stopping to take her gloves off. She leaves them crumpled in her lap. And extends her hand towards the beast.

She somehow already knows it won’t harm her.

It still sits there. Even as she gets her fingers to stroke the side of its neck. Fur so soft and thick under her palm. Silky smooth. She’d never felt a pelt this smooth.

It makes a deep appreciative growl in the back of its throat at being petted. A deep husking rumbling noise. A chuff of breath.

A sudden noise makes her shrink back. The wolf sharply turns its head. She looks too. A horse and rider galloping through the far lane, off in the woods

By the time she twists back, the wolf is gone. Sprinting off through the trees. Far to the horizon.

A black blur in the woods. And she is alone once more.

~


	8. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Nobody's perfect. We're all just one step up from the beasts. And one step down from the angels.” - Jeanette Walls ❣️

  
Iris was treading the route of the exhausting, bone wearing labour, of atonement and penitence.   
  


For her effrontery of staying out to pay call to Lord Ren three days previous, it seems her mother was determined to have her redeem herself in her family’s good graces. This apparently meant breaking her back, performing chores and labours for the Pembleton residents who were most crucially in need of assistance.  
  


Caroline promised Iris to Mrs Emery. The most miserable woman in all of the British isles. From the very last curling spray of waves on the outer Hebrides to the last crumbling rock of lands end. This woman was the most stern old biddy to ever exist. Possibly even worse than Aunt Lavinia. Aunt Lavinia did not have an austere infatuated obsession with ‘ _our good Christian lord.’_

Mrs Emery was a widow of thirty years now. Miserable and strict. And she also happened to be the verger. She lived near the quaint vicarage cottage. And moseying around the church making sure everything was spick and span for Reverend Potter.

Only she’s been struck down by a sudden ailment of the chest that leaves her bed bound in the frosty cold. Unable to perform the donkey work so needed around the small chapel, in readiness for Sunday’s sermon. Sweeping and scrubbing the floors. Polishing the pews. Dusting off prayer books and sewing up the holes in prayer cushions.

This lot now fell on Iris’s already loaded shoulders.

She wondered why her lot in life could be any further reduced to much more misery.

And here she found herself, in a freezing bitter chapel, with the sun barely warmed up to gold outside, on the cold stone floor, on her aching hands and sore knees, scrubbing the tiles with a hand brush.

Her fingers were pink with cold. Her hips and back already piercing sharp, something fierce. Arms weary from labours already and she’s barely started. Scratching sizzling bristles of a hard wooden brush to hand, scouring away the mess of the tiles. A clean rag, throughly soaped, swipes over in her other hand to polish what she had cleaned.

She is already clammy in the cold. Hair folded off her face, some dark twirls stick to her pink sweaty forehead. Cheeks pink from exertion. The only noises are the echoing huffs of her own breathing ricocheting off the flying stone buttresses up into the pitched roof.

She manages the floor with some success. Dirtying her gown in the process and ruining her knees. The cream muslin dress she put on this morning is now dusty and unkempt. The white apron Mrs Emery lent her is vastly too big and there are two dirty patches at her knees where she’s been on the ground.

She’s aching with the cold before too long. Nose running and eyes streaming from the dust. But she manages to scrub the whole chapel floor in under three hours. She curses her life several times over as she works. Not at all caring that she’s in a house of religion.

She’s livid angry and tired and if God is listening to her projected unsavoury thoughts? She has a good sharp sense and mind to remind him that she’s suffering the pains of up-keeping this sanctified place of his worship. Dares him to strike thunder and lightning at the steeple for her blasphemy. Much good it would do for her.

After the scrubbing, she empties the dirty pail of water on the frosty grass outside, and gets to work with the beeswax polish and another rag on the pews.

Kneeling on a prayer cushion - to save her tender knees. Rubbing along the grain of the deep mahogany wood until the light glimmers off it. Shining proud. The air in the church is stale with age. But now she’s getting to work the air is spiced instead with beeswax polish, that same honey scent from the candles, all around stood in their votives. The warmed bitter of dust off grey flagstones.

Where she’s working dutifully, birdsong chips away at the stained glass windows. Light beams in. Murky and watery, like rolls of cotton from the windows. Stained cherry red, emerald, sapphire and gold. Like a long buried treasure chest spilling in. Colour dots the thick black surround of the panes. Dust mites of nothing twirl and flutter in the still air. She listens to wood pigeons outside call, slow and lazy, as she worked her fingers to the bone.

As ever- working for the benefit of everyone around her, but herself.

She knows her mother is displeased with her conduct of late. She despises that Iris spent such time alone, with a mysterious Lord who they aren’t very well acquainted with.

Iris does not even pretend to share her worries. She cannot regret any minute of time she spent with Lord Ren. He was charming. Deuced too handsome to look at. He was unlike any mannered man she’d come across before. So uncaring for the reaches of society - which most dull men craved for. It was all they lived for. Lord Ren is vastly different.

Maybe it’s his foreign nature? He’s used to different ways and customs. He seemed so against all forms of politesses. Yet he’s charming, and he appeared thoughtful and sincere. Didn’t condemn her for talking because she was a member of the fairer sex.

When she was with Lord Ren, he spoke to her as an equal. Not as Hux had done. Labelled her with the title of merely being a ‘Sergeants wife’ and a mother to their children.

Not Iris. Not Mrs Hux. Or Iris Hux. Just. Wife. _A wife._

He’s shown her she was to be his wife and that really was all. A status of a name. It shouldn’t be confining her, in her entirety, restricting her whole identity into that meagre title. It’s nearly offensive to be thought of that way. It scares her that he considered all of who she is, to be termed in such a manner.

She wanted to marry a man who didn’t restrict her in any sense. She wants to read whatever books she liked. Take whatever walks she pleases. Snatch time for herself- lord knows she’s had little enough of such a luxury in her life.

She wants to keep to her room if she wishes. Sleep in past eight o’clock if she is tired. Dress the way she likes. Dress for her comforts and not for attracting the eyes of men to her comely form. If she wished too- she wants to shroud herself in the ugliest most unflattering dress she has, and take comfort in the fact no ones eyes would be praising nor censuring her. She’d huddle up into the ugly thing and have great joy of it.

The thought of being able to live for oneself and ones own pleasure is a heady daydream. She’s reminded of that sad frailty as she gets yet another splinter off the ages old wooden bench before her.

It daggers into her finger and when she reflexively pulls black, she sees another shard of wood dotted into her red raw palm. She slumped wretchedly down on the floor, tears pricking her eyes, kneeling on the sawdust prayer cushion as she tries to pick the worst of them out. Cursing her piteous life. Cursing her mother. Cursing her stupidity.

If she were a richer young woman, born to a more noble and moneyed family, no one would dare dream of treating her like this; doing chores and scrubbing floors. Chores reserved for the lowliest of skivvy maids. If she’d been born to more money, she’d have very little to vex or distress her. She’d get up of a day and her most taxing decision would be what fine richly trimmed silk gown she’d have to choose to put on.

Her life would be long tea party of fancy French confectionery, dressmakers fittings for yet another rich gown. Her days filled with taking calls from acquaintances, reading whatever books she liked and existing wherever she pleases. Then she’d have a sumptuous oiled bath every night, before bed. Go to her dreams smelling like a meadow of pretty wild flowers.

She wouldn’t have holes in her shoes. Or rub her hands to the bone scrubbing freezing cold floors. She wouldn’t be tired and angry and stressed every day. Comporting herself in painful ways for everyone but her own benefit. She wipes away tears. She feels like her back was breaking. But it was nothing compared to the pains of her heart-

She stops pitying herself and gets on with the task ahead. Up until well past noon. There were 42 pews to see too after all. Iris struggled doing it all on her own, she wonders how on this sainted earth the very elderly Mrs Emery manages each week. She’s atleast five and eighty in her frail age.

When she’s done, Iris stands at the front of the chapel. Sweat pouring off her forehead. Cheeks glow with her exercise. She wipes the back of her hand across her dripping brow. The back of her neck and her chest is sticky too. It’s become muggy in here with the candles lit and the sun warming the stone through the coloured glass.

She soldiers into her next task with wearied determination, and her bones grating with ache. Glad for the frost outside. She carries out stacks of of prayer books and sets them on a short wood stool as she beats the dust out the pages. Sneezing and coughing her way through it until her eyes sting. Dust and musty old leather and paper smearing all over her hands and her soggy apron. Still damp from her scrubbing earlier.

She makes light work of 250 prayer books. Not sure how much dust she’s inhaled along the way. But she strongly suspects enough to give her a hacking cough all night long. When she’s done there she deposits them back on the racks behind each pew.

That’s the chapel finally finished with. She closes the doors. Taking a moment to peer around. Satisfied with her hard work. She’d laboured like a Trojan. But her day was not over yet. She trudges the worn grass path through the graveyard. Through the stubby broken teeth of wonky old gravestones. Set slanted and leaning in the grubby green of the frosty earth.

She opens the creaky iron gate to the warped little cottage that abutted the vicarage. Mrs Emery’s cottage. The strict one with no decorations outside. No garden. No plants. Barely any life whatsoever. She was a austere woman who took little pleasure in a garden. Iris wondered what sort of person she could not take pleasure in a garden.

She knocks politely on the front door and lets herself into the cottage. Mrs Emery was exactly where Iris had left her after tending to her that morning. Sat up in her front parlour with a fire burning, a steaming cup of tea by her side and a blanket tucked over her knees.

She was a dainty little woman with a round face an a gold pair of round spectacles. Curved back and fingerless gloves on her nobbled old hands, cross little face sternly peering out at Iris.

“How are you faring, Mrs Emery?” Iris asks kindly. Bringing through her basket to the small round table in her front parlour. Light floods in through the Tudor crossed window. Offering her a decent place to fulfil her remaining task.

She was to sew up the patched holes in the worn kneelers - the prayer cushions used in the chapel. Mending years worth of use and wear. She sits down at the table and gets on with her task. Mrs Emery seemed happy - a most relative term for her temper - to sit reading through her bible. Stating with a little scrunched frown that it was ‘ _most instructive.’_

She then asks if Iris reads the bible. She looked up from her mending, eyes straining, fingers sore and almost bleeding from the strain of stabbing the needle through the tough thread over and over and over-

Iris stutters. Pulling a long thread through. Half concentrated on her task. “Well- uh. I don’t study it closely as you do, Mrs Emery, but I- do so enjoy Reverend Potters sermons every Sunday.” She counters nicely.

Mrs Emery scowls. “It’s not the same as reading about the good word of our righteous lord from holy scripture.” She insists crossly. Tapping her bible furiously.

“I’ll read it the second I get home. Mrs Emery.” She lies through her teeth. Stabbing through another stitch. Smiling genially. Continuing on with her work.

She divides her time between making a hot posset for Mrs Emery, between smothering back yawns as her syes adjust to the fading light. Eyes straining under the timid glow of a single tapered candle on a brass stick before her. It glimmers honey-amber off the blue-black windows outside.

Mrs Emery’s snores catch Iris’s attention. So absorbed was she in her work. She looks up at the carriage clock on the bare mantel and gasps, horrified.

It was nearly ten o’clock at night.

She rubs her bleary eyes. Stands up. The brutally uncomfy chair she was sat on scrapes back and clatters against the parlour wall.

She unties her apron hurriedly. The noise of her standing brought Mrs Emery back to life, waking her rudely as she sat up with a particularly loud and ungainly snort.

“I’m so sorry Mrs Emery. I quite forgot the time.” She explains worriedly. Hurriedly going for her coat hung out on the only peg in the hallway in the frosty cold kitchen. A tiny spit of a pathetic fire roars in the parlour. Near where Mrs Emery is sat.

She pulls on her wool scarf. And eases into her ragged old blue coat. Buttons it up tight. Knots the scarf securely around her neck. Walks back into the parlour for her basket that held her trusty sewing kit. Iris piled what she had used there, into the cradle of the straw wicker. Not wanting to delay herself any further.

She looks out the tiny window. Blue night drawing in. Dark velvet onyx now. Wind rattled at the ledge, howled bitterly at the glass like a baying wolf. It was blowing a storm outside. Weather foully cold. Atleast it wasn’t raining- Iris would scurry back to Westwell before it did.

She swallows down her trepidation. Hooks her basket on her arm. “Best you be off home. Miss Ashton.” Mrs Emery agrees. Iris looks over to the woman. Says she’ll see her on Sunday for sermon.

Mrs Emery holds out her hand to her before she goes. Iris sees three small silver coins resting on the black wool of her palm. From the warped gnarl of her little stiff fingers. “The Lord rewards hard work, my dear.” She professes proudly with a wrinkled smile. Clunking the coins at her.

Iris bites back a retort about the Lords gratefulness. Three shillings was an almost insulting offering after her labours of the day.

“You are the very soul of christian generosity. Ma’am.” Iris smiles. Pocketing the measly sum. She wasn’t expecting a bank note. But she bristled at Mrs Emery thinking that was such a handsome sum. It wasn’t the old woman’s fault.

She bids the elderly verger goodnight. Heads for the cottage door and peels it open. The wind nearly buffets it out her grip. She winces stepping out into the cold. Huddling down into her coat as she walked along. Out the front gate. And through the eery surrounding of the graveyard. Everything was grey and dead and governed by dark.

She walks along the short snowy lane. Lined either side by tall hedges and modest houses. Little cottages with sloped thatched roofs that sag in the middle. Tiny cosy dwellings. Windows stark and gold against the night. Candles on the window ledges. Shining through net lace curtains. Or the cracks in velvet drapes. Families inside wrapped up, cosy and warm. Sat by the hearth. Safe from this winter. Warmer than she currently is, that’s for sure.

She trudges along quick. The fastest route home this time of night was cutting through the main street of Pembleton. The road lined with the milliners, the butchers, the drapers, and the haberdashers.

The main promenade of businesses. Unfortunately. There were also three taverns on this road. The Golden Harp, the White Horse, and the Three Boars. Iris, and many other gently bred young ladies, were warned to stay away from these places at night. These were only places suitable for barmaids or painted women.

Men were most rowdy when they fall on drink. And that is no place for the eyes of a young woman to be witnessing.

She walks far across the street from the first pub. Keeps her head ducked way down. Sees the row of coaches sat on the street. Black square shapes glimmering in the night. Horses shivering in the cold wind. A few gentleman of the area frequented the less rowdy of the working man’s pubs.

Men are in the street too. Gathered around, tankards in hands. Smoking pipes out in the street. Outside the pub doors. As Iris walks closer she could hear the clamour and the din. Shouting and gruff male voices and old folk songs being sung.

Her stomach drops to her feet when they start calling out to her. Shrinking up like a shrivelling leaf. They shout across the road to her. Stumbling each other, leering and jeering each other. Iris frowns but keeps walking quickly away.

She’s not that quick to escape their attention. Distracted, she bumps into more men coming out the pub on her side. Collides right into the back of a man. Ploughing into him. His coat was coarse brown wool and he smelt like ale. She staggered back. Mortified.

He turns and gives her a filthy leer. “Watch where you walk. Lass.” He drawls. Scanning her up and down.

“Excuse me.” She squeaks out rather pathetically. Bobbing a short curtsey and she sidesteps around him. But he goes with her. Following her movements. She walks again and his lanky chest is right in front of her.

She shrinks back yet again, afraid. She doesn’t look up. She knows that leering face and smile is being aimed down at her.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing out at night? You’re not a working lass now are you? Cause I’d pay a handsome sum to get between those pretty legs.” He sneers.

She averts her gaze. Mortified. One of his intoxicated friends, seizes the moment to tug his arm aside.

“Leave her be. You’re scaring the poor lass. Sorry sweetheart. He never could resist a bonny face.” He tells. Gripping his mate so she could walk on past.

They cackle loudly at her as she goes. Watching her walk away. The sound claps her ears like horrible thunder She swallows down her nervousness. Feels the hair pinned at the back of her neck, needle straight. She plods quick over melting puddles and mud in her brisk steps.

Determined to get as far away from all these drunk men as she can manage. Pinpricks settles uneasy on her skin. Her fear. Her wariness of being out so late. All of it marginally eclipsed by the aches and strains of her body. She is cold, worn to the bone, and she just wants to get home and feel safe.

Little does she know. But she roused more than the displeasing attentions of the rambling drunks outside.

Inside the tavern, sat a certain man who made all those rowdy drunks look like simpering dandy’s.

He was hunting. Ever since word got around about the wolf, or the madman. It’s been harder and harder to hunt. Seeking out prey became more difficult. Men roamed in tight packs now. After the wild circulation of rumours.

He listens to them talk about it in the pub. Right in front of him as he sits at the small round table looking out the window onto the street. His back to the room. Ignoring the beer in front of him. Listening. Waiting. Watching.

His instincts are fired up and his temper is a foul one. He needs to feed and he’s been snappy all day. Ill tempered. Needing blood to soothe the interminable itch in his blood. He’s not a man tonight. He’s a hunter.

He listens to the idiots over his shoulder drink themselves stupid and gossip like hens. Hens who didn’t know there was a wolf sat here in the chicken coop.

“Here. You know that Davey Sampson. The Doctor up in the village said they could barely identify his body. Almost ripped in half he was.” Some grizzly old farmer leans in and says to his mate.

Someone younger pipes up. “I heard they was picking bits of him up for days. And they’ve called the local constable to come keep watch hereabouts.” He says to a chorus of gruff and grizzled ‘ayes’ and mumbles.

“What could do that to man?” Someone else asks.

“Nothing I wanna meet in the dark on me way home.” Says the old farmer again.

“Every man I know coming back from the pub, now makes sure he never wanders alone. Never cuts through the woods if he can help it. And always keeps himself armed with a flintlock pistol or a knife.” They all pitch in with agreements and theory’s.

Kylo’s smiling. He crooks a wicked grin. Pistols won’t touch him. Lead bullets or brass rifle cartridges won’t pierce his skin. He knows. Plenty of men have fired at him in self defence. He’s got thick skin - strong like white marble.

He’s smiled at the foolish men that shot at him in the past. Watching the bullets ricochet. Enjoyed drinking the horror from their faces as he advanced without a scratch and ripped them apart.

Knives won’t sink in his skin. They just don’t. He’s almost offended that they think such petty things will keep them safe from his mighty strength. He can snap swords in half and not bleed. He can crumple rifles to dust with his bare hands.

The din of the pub becomes rowdy again. Voices and drinking and singing. A melting pot of noise and smells. Ale dropped on the bar from clumsy hands. Stale of it with dried hops and barley warms the air. Musk of woodsmoke from the embers in the crooked fireplace.

The dirt and muck caked on the uneven flagstone floors. The voices are roaring and blaring and the laughter is loud. The smell of wet dog as a scruffy canine sat under its owners table. It was a shaggy brown mongrel with muddy eyes and was more like a smudgey mop of matted fur encasing some bones. Probably riddled with fleas. When Kylo stepped in, it had slunk to tremble between its masters knees. Whimpering. Gazing at him with mournful brown eyes. Shivering like a cowed thing.

He sits there. Alone at his table. Mood foul. Mouth dry. Watching the reflections of candles and men drinking in the narrow Tudor crossed windows. Glass smeared with dust. Frost crawling up on the other side.

He watched wind howl and batter the street. From the amber candlelight and dark gloom of this pub he lets the soothe of mankind blot his ears for a while. Waits to see if someone slips out back to relieve themselves up the back wall of the pub. Some brave drunkard tries to stumble home alone.

No such luck yet. But he’ll wait. His patience and need won’t halt for long- but he’ll wait. He’ll wait to hunt. Mouth undeniably parched - it feels as if his tongue is cracking like much too dry clay.

The first moment that the blood touched his lips tonight, he knows he’ll glut and glut on it until theres nothing left. Maybe one won’t be enough. He may have to kill two tonight. His hunger demands it. He’s always been greedy.

He’s not just angry about the lack of easy food.

He’s angry because of the pathetic boy that was hanging around Miss Ashton. Dressed up in his ridiculous toy soldier uniform. That got him gritting his teeth. Seeing the preening idiot kiss her hand and flatter her. Talk about their marriage and their offspring.

Kylo had to feel every second of her trepidation and her dread. She didn’t want to marry him. She wasn’t attracted to such a meagre offering of love and protection. That’s what made him so livid. Her reluctance. The life that’s being forced upon her.

The thought of his sweet little dove lying under that lanky pale man on their wedding night, in the marital bed as he blindly fumbles between her thighs with trying to beget her with his first heir-

Kylo almost crushes the table he’s at, into splinters. He swallows and lets his eyes dart around the room. He needs to feed. Of he’ll go fully feral and that was never safe. He could ravage this entire village and drink everyone he comes across. He’d leave none alive.

His mood is a sour one- and then, _oh then..._ it gets irrevocably worse.

A great big gust of wind outside, it slithers in on the draft from the window, blows a far too familiar scent in his direction. Curls at his nose. Lavender. Clary sage. Peppermint.

_No. No. It can’t be- not here. Not now. Not-_

He looks up _._ His fingers clench the table so hard he feels it crack. There she is. Right outside the window, out in the street in the dark. He feels his jaw clench. Trembling in anger. His mouth waters.

He sees her stumble into the path of the drunkards.

A low growl shatters his throat like piercing broken glass as he sees one of them crowd her back on the street to scare her. Walking her back. His friend tugs him aside. Kylo’s knuckles snap where he curls them into fists. Veins straining out his skin. Filled with molten black poison. Temples pounding. They were lucky he didn’t march across the street and start snapping some necks.

He knows the vile thoughts shooting through that man’s head. He doesn’t have to imagine. He’s sat among drunk men for a thousand years. He knows the foul things that lurk when drink takes over the mind. Nastier impulses come to light.

He watches her sidestep the scum and scurry away.

Here he is, the ultimate predator, and his ultimate prey is just wandering innocently past.

He closes his eyes for a second. Tries to breathe. Deep. But all there is, is _her_ , cloying up his nose. He’s ready to pounce. To feed. To do things he shouldn’t do to her.

Lust. Hunger. Both now pulsing in his bloodstream.

Her sweat. Her skin. Her hair. That wet sweet heaven between her legs. The clean salt and floral nectar of his Dove. He can smell her sweet cunt from here. Hear the pulse beating scared in her neck.

_Ambrosia._

He bites back the inclination for his fangs to grow. He licks his parched tongue over his sticky dry front teeth. Begs them to keep at bay. _  
_

They might. But he can’t-

She walks out of sight of the window. He stands from the table and tears across to the door.

Chair nastily scrapes the tiles. Beer sloshes as he disturbs the table. Harshly shoving men out his way.

They shout and bristle at him but he couldn’t care less. They turn around to challenge him but his sheer size has their tongues and bravery shrivelling up in their mouths, before their words have the temerity to make it past their foolish teeth.

He storms out the pub doorway. Terrible and tall in his black greatcoat lapping at his boots. As if he’s sculpted out of the night air. Black waistcoat and undressed white shirt on his big chest. The collar folded up at his neck. Joining to the black upturned collar of his cape like coat.

He eyes her in the distance. Sees the sway of her skirts as she walks briskly. A glowing gorgeous spec in that dark night. He was downwind from her. Could smell her. Heady like too much rose perfume. It’s making him woozy.

She beckons to every sense he possesses - especially the raw animal ones.

He follows her. Deep into the heart of the dark wood.

Pursued her down the dark lane. The pallid icy road that glows in the night. Trees all around whipped and punished by the harsh wind, flurry’s of snow swirling. He hangs back. Watching. She hurriedly steps off the road and crunches her boots across the wild foliage. Walking fast.

She’d never move fast enough to be able to escape him.

She can hear them. Whoever they are. She can hear distant footfalls slithering off the trees. Cracking and snapping like dry kindling underfoot.

Her chest pumps in panic. Breathing panicked. She hides behind a tree as she stops in the middle of the woods. Snaps her head around. Scans the dark horizon. Tries to see the shape of a man following after her- one of those deuced drunks maybe. The ones who accosted her. He’d seemed nastily determined to scare her.

Her petrified heart thuds louder and louder in her chest. She wills her scared tears away. But they dribble down her cheeks. Drop on her coat and bead away on the wool. Adrenaline kicks through her blood. Nerves rag sharp. Almost hurting her.

The distant thick of gloom doesn’t reveal anything. She can barely see the slithers of trees by the foggy moon. It’s blurred out of the sky by clouds. Rudely shoved away. It can’t even light up her journey home. Can’t help her.

She’s drowning in helplessness. And the creature stalking her is aware and is drinking in every drop.

She can’t make out anything through the threes. They stand resolute and harmless. Like sturdy black pillars rising out the frosted foliage of the ground. All that’s visible to view is the ribboning black of tree trunks on the smog of the grey dark horizon. Her lungs chill and stab with each deep breath. Her stomach squirming.

She keeps moving. Fumbles in her footsteps. Wished she put her heavy sewing scissors in her basket so she could have something to defend herself with.

Kylo watches her move through the trees. She won’t escape him. She has no hope. He needs to feed and they’re perfectly blessedly alone out here in the snow. Just them two.

The Dove. And the Wolf.

His golden eyes watch her pick up her pace again. Clutching her basket tight to her body. Folding her coat tighter around herself. Hunching up into her body. Trying to make herself look smaller. As she so often does.

He’s getting closer and closer. Nearer in pursuit. He can hear the husky nature of her panic in her breath. Hear the fast slush of her blood pumping hot in her veins.

He’s so near now he can taste the salt on her skin. Feel her heat. See the wisps of her hair as the dull night shines off it. The creases in her clothes. And the musk of her sweat pouring off her panicked frail little body.

She looks _so_ delicious when fleeing in fear.

Even nearer. He can hear the panic cloying up her throat. He wonders what her fear will taste like?

Now. He gets the chance to find out.

He’s on her. He hears her screams split her lips. His hand catches her skirts and he growls as he spins her around. She begs.

“ _No!_ Please.” She whimpers as his body slams to hers. She sobs, croaking desperate.

His body dominates her. Crowding her back. Shoving her roughly into a tree. He’s intent to make her last.

Why is it they always beg? Always plead for a god that isn’t there at their shoulder. The devil like him is instead.

He scoops her up in his arms. Hands at her waist. Luckily she wore her hair tied back. He bows his feral mouth to her neck and pierces the skin with his razor sharp white teeth with one bite.

He moans as she floods thick onto his tongue. Nectar on his dry throat. He pants and huffs and growls like an animal. Arousal shooting straight to his cock, making him hard as he’s ever been. He pulls back and feels her pulse thunder against his tongue, against his smiling mouth and his pearl-crimson stained teeth.

He laughs at her whimpers. Kisses her gushing wound. Lapping her like she’s a luxury. Feeling it spill down her shoulder. Stain her coat. Warm scarlet wool where blue once was. Sully the snow at their feet. Droplets pattering to the floor. Little gleaming ruby drips.

She tastes like peaches, copper and sour-saccharine red berries. _Divine_.

The best blood he’s had in this cursed country. The best damn cunt too by the smell of her. He hasn’t fucked in years-

He shoves a muscled thigh between her legs. He ruts his hips into her. Pants when her hips rub her mons onto his clothed erection. Seeking friction on herself. He’s drunk with it. If it wasn’t snowing out here- he’d take her. Rip that dress up and spear his cock deep as he drank her down from her neck. Or her thigh-

Much too tempting a thought to have her deliciously innocent pink pussy right there in his face as he drinks from her femoral artery. He drags her dress up and reveals her wool stockings and garters. Smooths his hands up her cold thighs. Rakes his sharp claws up her legs to feel her shiver.

He ruts her into that tree. Pins her there with his massive body. Cups her round plump ass. Bashed her into it and now the snow flurries over them, disturbed from the branches above. Clings to his coat in almost the same way she is.

She drips ruby black from his hungry smug maw. Fangs drip garnet.

Her nails claw at his hair, rake at his coat shoulders. Her groans and gasps sound too erotic to be ones of pain as he drains her life away. It makes him even harder in his breeches.

She’s limp in his arms and even still he doesn’t stop. He sags to the floor with her frail body. Spreads her out into the snow, lays her into the thick cushion of it and settles his big hips between her plump thighs. Curls one shapely leg over his hip.

Not stopping the feast for even a second. Rutting and grinding her as he feeds. Feeling sparks of bliss zip at his veins as he humps into her. Clasping her close. He can feel the pleasure in her too. His thigh rubbing her weak tender wet sex. The wet staining through her skirts and chemise as he cups one of her hips.

The beast won. The beast always wins.

He laps and laps and feasts. Biting more and more to get more blood. Ravaging her pale delicious neck. He drinks until she stains the ground all around them. A pool of her drowning sinking into the snow. He is drinking of her til there’s nothing left. She barely twitches. She’s past the point of saving. Her head falls back.

Pulse slows slows and finally slows to a stop.

He doesn’t care. He’s tasting and tasting his little Dove until there’s nothing left. Not even life. Just death. And blood and snow.

“ _Kylo_.” Comes a voice he knows well. It’s not hers.

Draegan’s voice brings him hurtling back to reality. He blinks.   
  


  
Him feeding on her was a vision. One placed in his head like a planted seed. 

He’s actually stood. Stuck still in those trees he’s following her through. Listening to the voice of his last lover strike through his head like the peeling toll of a harsh bell. Bringing him back.

There’s no mistaking it. That voice hard like needles and smoother than silk and cream. The comfort of it warms him. Why was his maker reaching out to him after all this time? He hasn’t seen him or heard his voice in almost three centuries.

He swallows, breath puffs out his dry lips.

His gold eyes watch her walk further away through the trees. Escaping. Fever dream had enchanted him. He had been a hairs breath from reaching out and snatching her skirts, fisting them in his hands.

One terrifying second away from reaching out and ripping her throat open and killing her.

He could feel the rasp of her dress on his cold fingers. The scraping cloth of Muslin. He’d almost done it. He’d touched her dress. He nearly gave in-

He let her slip away instead. Even though he wants to chase, and stalk and fuck and drink. He _wants_ to taste her. Everywhere. The most exquisite creature he’s ever beheld.

He catches himself on the trees. Between two of them. He can’t quite tell if he’s holding himself back or bracing himself up.

His palms graze the bark. Tactile rough of it stings his hands. Every fibre of him wants and hungers for her. He swallowed back his greed. He looked beyond the blood lust. He’d been _shown_ what might have been-warned. Warned of what he might do.

Draegan speaks up to him again. Voice so tender and present.

_“Know this- if you destroy her now, Kylo. If you give in- you will face all your remaining ages on this earth in solitude and misery.”_ He warns.

His tone and voice fades on the howling gales like white foggy smoke. Thats Draegan summed up beautifully.

Pale like snow. Like mysterious fog. Like spiders webs beaded in frost.

It’s as if he’s here. Towering amongst the trees. That singular form of his. Taller than Kylo. Leaner and slimmer. Deadlier. More deadly than anyone would presume.

Draegan has the powers of the ancients. The first demon ever created. The first creature ever to hunt for blood. Sired directly by the devil. He could snap his fingers and slaughter an and entire continent if he so wished.

Quite rightly he’s been known by many monikers in his time. The pale one. The angel of death. White demon. Pallid and sleek. Hair that spills straight like shimmering porcelain silk down his shoulders. His eyes glow like grey dull moons when he feeds.

His skin like pearl marble. Elegant piercing eyes as blue as kyanite stones. The beautiful cupid’s bow of his handsome upper lip. That angular face, with a chiseled jaw and fine sharp features, so calm and so handsome. Enchantingly handsome. Designed by the very devil himself.

Kylo lets an exhale cleanse his big chest. After their estrangement and after all this time. And Draegan reaches out for him now. Pulls him back. _Why?_

The answer is plain as day before Kylo’s eyes. Scurrying away from him through the trees.

He blinks after her. The blue blur in the distance scampering off into the woods. She’s still scared. Kylo reels himself in. Focuses on acting on the correct thing to do in this circumstance.

Iris is still hurrying along when she hears a definite heavy tread close in behind her. She thought they’d lost interest a minute ago. Just her breathing echoing out in the deadened silence. Crunch of snow under her boots. She ducks under low branches that tear at her clothes, she bats away trees that get in her path.

She loses her footing going down a frosty slope. Bumpy ground slippy. She yelps as she trips. But she doesn’t hit the floor-

He hears her cry. And it fires his blood. Feels the spiking fear and he knows there’s only one choice.

What halts her from falling, is a big hand cupping the back of her elbow.

It slithers across her arm, snaking there and hooking her around to hoist her up. She tries to go faster or twist out the way. But the hand is firmly handling her. He pulls her around.

She gasps when she sees his face. Big beautiful features full up of stoicism and anger as he looks down at her. He crowds her back into the nearest big tree, practically shoved and pushes her back to it. Nowhere to go. Caught. He doesn’t take his hand off her arm.

“What in the _hell_ are you doing out here alone, Miss Ashton?” He demands loudly.

Where he’s cupped her arm to steady her, he doesn’t seem to realise that the front of their bodies are a hairs breadth from touching. He exhales from that big chest and his coat buttons brush her front. Her heart is pounding and it sounds like heaven- being this close.

“Lord Ren.” She gasps weakly. Stammering her answer through almost chattering teeth. She’s ultimately glad. Although frightened from the sudden shock of his materialising. She calms knowing he’s here. Maybe he scared off the men who were setting upon her?

He speaks as he brusquely shoves his coat off his shoulders. Eyes biting hard into her like rough cut black gems. His glare almost hurt.

“You’re going to freeze to death in that shoddy coat. There is a killer somewhere lurking hereabouts. Preying on people who walk alone at night. And why are you out at such a late hour?”

She opens her mouth to retort but gets cut off. He watches those pink little lips part and he grits his teeth at the erotic nature of it.

“You could have turned your ankle the way you fell just now. What would become of you then? Stranded here all night in the snow...” He speaks sharp and cross as he steps and hooks his coat around her shoulders. Yanks her close and angrily shoved her arms in the sleeves. Tugs the lapels and brings it secure around her.

Silly - but she feels like crying. “I was detained at the church. Carrying out errands for the verger. She was left bed bound and her chores fell to me.” Iris explains. Sniffles sadly.

“A-and my family cannot afford a nicer coat.” She mumbles. Voice cracking. Feeling the height of awkwardness and foolishness. His coat comes to her boots. Absolutely swathes her in a rich soft wool. Softest and nicest thing she’s ever had on her back. Lined with crimson silk. Smells like sandalwood and pepper cologne and new expensive wool.

“You cannot afford a new coat? When at The Phillips you were dripping in diamonds and silks...” He comments pithily.

She shifts. Peers up at him. “New wool coats don’t persuade men into matrimony. Lord Ren. Silk dresses and diamonds, do.” She answers.

She’s parroting those words. They didn’t sound like her own. He sighs. He’s made her feel ashamed. That was not his intention.

“Do you know what else persuades men into matrimony?” He asks her gently. She swallows. Shakes her head. Looking at her boots.

“Not having their intended freeze to death in the snow.” He japes. His wide gentle hand comes up and tips her chin up to make her look at him as he spoke. His skin was frozen. She wants to offer him back his coat. He must be shivering in such a thin shirt and waistcoat.

“You’re coming with me and I will brook no argument.” He insists. Steps back and offers her his hand.

She looks up, seeing his handsome expression softly gazing across. The wind ruffles his hair. Specs of snow land on his big shoulders. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen a man more deserving of the title of ‘beautiful’ before.

Iris timidly steps close and lifts her arm up for him to take it. He does so gently and clasps her close as if she’s precious to him.

He walks her through the forest, in silence, and back out toward the lane they trod in on. Back past the taverns past the rowdy drunks. Iris sees he is leading her to his coach.

She was admittedly shy of walking past all the inebriated men once more. Kylo feels how she huddled into his side a little more when they go past. She had his protection.

And his sharp looks cut any of the low born scum, who’d even so much as _dare_ pronounce one syllable of a comment toward her. Even look at her and Kylo would make sure they never live to see another dawn.

She cannot help but smile when they come to his coach. Being pulled by a very familiar black beast of a horse. Erland shifts and stomps when she comes close. Neighs and snorts at her. She gladly rubs his head and fusses him. He’s grunting and nickering in happiness. Dewy eyed and in love with her.

Ears softly arched back as he nuzzles her shoulder. Shifting forwards like a silly huge dog wanting affection. Wanting more of her. More pats. Sniffing her hair with his hot breath. Snuffling for attention like he isn’t a big ridiculous muscled beast of a thing. She laughs at him, cheered by his equine affection.

Kylo rolls his eyes at the stupid animal. But he can’t help being amused by it too. The effect she has on all creatures is beguiling. He pats his horses corded neck and tells the driver to take them to Westwell. He tips his hat and nods a good evening to her.

Kylo helps her into the coach. She holds his coat up so she doesn’t trip over again. One of the drunkards across the road at the Three Boars takes the opportunity to call out to Kylo’s back. As he’s turned to see her safe into the coach.

“Caught a pretty prize have you, Mi’lord?” He mocks. The gin reeking inebriate slurs at him.

Kylo does nothing but turn his head back to glare at the idiot. Who crumpled back in fear and fell flat on his ass. As if pushed over. Kylo heard the snap of his wrist as he fell down with his weight collapsing on the frail bone. It satisfies him a little.

He gets himself into the coach and sits opposite Iris. Shuts the door and taps lightly on the roof. The carriage lurches away. Away from cold. Away from danger.

Iris snuggled a little into the bench. He’d cleverly lined the velvet seat with a wolf pelt he bought from Bavaria. Kept it for bitter nights like these. With howling winds and snow.

He notices how she keeps itching and rubbing at her hands. He braces far forwards on his seat, getting close again. Their knees knock into each other’s as the coach tumbled and bumped over the uneven road. His cold hands take her gloves at the wrists and he gently, carefully removes them.

The rush of them slipping off her hands is like an endless thrilling kiss. She loses her breath because of it.

He notices how her heart changes rhythm. The sound of her thumping heart bumps off the tiny enclosed coach walls.

He turns her palm over and frowns down at the state of it in the dark. She’s pocked with sore looking splinters and cuts. Skin cracked dry and looking chafed raw.  
  


He sighs angrily. Wordlessly removes her other glove and finds the other hand much the same. Raw where she’s been gripping her basket and scouring her fingers to the bone.

He never wants any pain or harm to comes to these soft precious hands. He strokes his thumb over the back of her knuckles. Gently leans down and kisses each soft arch of her thumb where the skin is most enflamed. Her breath hitches. His lips tingle on her skin, her cuts feel soothed. Stings less at the touch of his mouth.

“Why are your hands in such a state?” He seeks. Knowing already he won’t like the answer she gives.

“I was- tasked with scrubbing the chapel floor. And polishing the pews and sewing prayer cushions...” She tells him in an exhausted list.

His frown deepens. “Tell me, why has a high born gentleman’s daughter been assigned the tasks of the lowest skivvy?” He asks.

“To atone for my spending a day out riding, alone, with you.” She offers in a tiny confession.

Storm clouds brew in his eyes. He hadn’t yet let go of her hands. He gestures to her shredded palms.

“ _This_ is atonement?” He asks her incredulously. Her tears start again. But not because of him. But because she finally has someone she can cry too about how wretched she feels.

This is the girl who takes all the brunt and the stresses of her family burdens. And now her back is breaking. She’s crumbling away and Kylo can’t bear to see it

She wipes away her tears, quickly skidding her hands over her cheeks. Taking away the salt. He brings a clean handkerchief out his pocket. The same initials, stitched in red. Bleeding onto the cloth. The edge stitched prettily, dripping thread in herringbone stitch. Even the smallest things he owns are beautiful.

He shushes her. “It’s alright.” He soothes. Drawing the cloth over her tears. She looks at him thankfully. Her cheeks blooming up red where he rubbed them.

“I shouldn’t be discussing these things I suppose.” She says.

“You know I don’t conform to societal rules.” He tells. “I merely wish not to see you suffering in any manner.” He explains.

“Iris. You are a beast of many great burdens to your family. It pains me to see you put to such discomfort for no good reason at all.” He pledges lowly. Unimpressed. Growling nearly.

“I had hoped my mother would ease her severity’s on me with the promise of a suitor on the horizon.”

“Sergeant Hux...” He asks. Trying not to snap his teeth around the name.

“Yes- how did?” She crumpled her face into a frown.

“The maids talk. And my Butler, as astute as he likens himself to be, is a glutton for gossip.” He explains. That earns him a laugh from her.

“Maids know everything.” She agrees wisely. He smiles. Silence looms on them for a second.

“Erland missed you.” He points out with a grin.

“That spoiled brat of a horse gets treats galore, yet somehow he still remembers the passing instance of a beautiful young woman feeding him a carrot. Since then, he’s been utterly enchanted.” He promises.

She smiles again. “He’s a lovely horse. And his master is equally as so.” She compliments. “Plucking foolish young girls out the cold and safely rescuing them.”

He remarked in his head, how he was seconds away from not even rescuing her at all. Rather more unsavoury instincts nearly took her from him. Draegan senses it. Managed to beat the beast away at the last second. Any longer and it would’ve been too late.

Kylo could’ve had her up against that tree. Fucking her like an animal in heat as he fed. And Draegans influence then, shouting in his head, all that wouldn’t have been enough to tear him away.

“This young girl in particular is not foolish. And always will be infinitely worth saving.” He tells her seriously.

She looks down at the handkerchief he gifted her. Much like the other one she woke up with the other morning after her strangely comforting dreams of him. She’s no clue where it came from. Maybe she forgotten she borrowed it off him on their ride?

She looks at the two stitched letters, emblazoned in crimson like a dripping wound on pale white skin. KR.

“Kylo.” He explains. Seeing her looking. She peers up at him, smiling.

“My first name.” He adds.

She’s never heard a more musical name for a man. She’d heard plenty of Johns, and George’s and Williams. Kingly names after great men of the ages. She likes that his name didn’t stand in worship of anyone. It was entirely its own strong merit. And it was a handsome sounding name.

“It’s charming.” She tells him.

“I’m glad you think so.” He offers. Mostly people here find his first name an oddity. He’s grateful she feels differently about it.

The coach pulling up Westwell’s drive broke their little bubble of happiness. Iris looks with dread at the parlour windows. Knowing her mother would be fuming. One, at the lateness of the hour. Secondly, at her ‘poor choice’ of company.

She’s proven right when the coach lumbers to a stop. The front door flies open. Simpson is charged out the way by a furious Mrs Ashton. Ready to seethe and spit nails at her eldest. She rears out that house. A striking sharp vision in austere grey. Face like thunder and expression hard as steely granite.

Kylo opens the coach door for her. Poison is already dripping from the old vipers mouth. Forked tongue slithers out between her fangs.

“How dare you tarnish all of our reputations staying out like this Iris. Do you have any idea what people will say about this? I shudder to think.” She snaps as her daughter walks up the path to front door.

“Staying out at night like a harlot.” She turns her eyes to Kylo. “Keeping unsavoury company. Have you forgotten your match to Hux? You better hope you haven’t jeopardised that.”

Kylo’s teeth are grit. His earlier anger circles back and ploughs full force into his chest. He tears out the coach and storms up to the front door like a dark hell fury. Caroline almost shrinks back behind it. He doesn’t hold back.

“She wouldn’t be out this time of night if you hadn’t sent her to atone for a supposed societal slight that was not of her doing.” He begins.

Voice loud and furious. Like astonishing thunder. Iris is almost scared of his rage. But another little half of her is slightly enamoured of it.

“You know perfectly well there is a killer loose and stalking these parts. And yet you care so little for your own, you’d let her scamper around the countryside running favours and working her fingers to the bone like she’s no better to you than a servant. You are a _disgrace_. And should be wholly ashamed to call yourself a mother.” He growls.

“The very same killer had his eyes set on your daughter tonight. Had I not scared him off and escorted her home to your side, who knows, she may now be laying torn to pieces on the road, Mrs Ashton.” He remarks bitterly.

Iris swallows back her fear. Suddenly very grateful he’s there. Grateful he spared her that horrifying detail. Made sense why he was so enraged when he found her. She was in more danger than she had realised.

His booming shouts attracted much attention. Posy and Flora are leaning over the upstairs banister in their paper curls and frilly nightgowns. Mouths gaping like guppy fish. Eyes wide with Kylo’s blasting pieces out of their mother with his words that fell harsh like raining bullets. Metal and acid rain pours from his mouth. He lets his hated and anger flow free.

“You are so keen to better yourself by societal standards that you treat Iris like an ineffectual wager in a gamble and give not one shred of consequence to her well being or happiness. She has splinters and blisters on her hands from her labours. She’s working herself to the bone for this family and you cannot even afford her your time or respect.”

“You’re a piteous excuse for a human being and even less of one for a mother.” He reiterates. Mother managed to unknot her tongue to speak.

“If this were a different century. I would have you called out and _shot_ for such words to me.” She seethes up to Kylo. Lips pulled back. Teeth bared. Voice: pure venom and vitriol. Like bile.

Kylo sneers. “I would remind you of _who_ I am. Mrs Ashton.” He leers.

She was just a Mrs. He is a Lord. He carries influence and wealth. He could buy this whole sorry estate and turf them off it if he wanted too. He could never do that to Iris. But he would happily see her acerbic mother live in reduced circumstances. See her try and crow her misplaced dignity over him then.

“You’ve managed to claw your slithering up the ladder of polite society, Madam. But do not dare for one second think I don’t know that you and your ancestors come from trade out of Cheapside. I could send you crawling back to the filthy little rock of a hovel you dragged the family out from under.”

“Don’t _dare_ forget who I am and you don’t even want to witness what I am capable of.” He promises.

“Nor should you forget your daughter has free will and a mind of her own. And is of age. She may associate with anyone she chooses. How long do you imagine she’ll be ruled under your thumb?” He remarks softer. But his words still fall hard like stinging icy hail.

Mother swallows back her rage. Now it’s replaced, quite rightly, by fear. The woman looked blanched and green.

Iris has never seen such a splendid sight at this. Kylo crosses to her and kisses her hand kindly. He looks up and nods a goodnight to Posy and Flora. And when he storms out the house and slams the door. Two paintings fall off the crumbling wallpapered wall. Dust spits onto the floor too.

Caroline turns to Iris. Tries to compose herself. “You will no longer go _anywhere_ out of my sight. Nor unchaperoned.” She snarls before she strides into the front parlour and slams the door. It echoes violently through the house.

Posy and Flora erupt into hissing giggles and gossip upstairs. It’s floating down the stairs like smoke.

Iris sags against the wall by the stairs. Besides the fact she’s practically now under house arrest- despite herself, she can’t stop grinning.

~


	9. Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little- erotic up in here ❣️

No one in a possession of a sane mind attended the Elton musicale, without a stout idea of the horrors that lay ahead of them, all evening. Tonight. Iris was one such girl. She had not been forewarned.

She’d taken her seat. Folded the programme elegantly in her lap. Politely discussed the weather with Hux whilst she waited.

Then parted the red velvet curtains on the painted Greek scene of one wall, showing them the stage, lit with lanterns. And in turn revealed their maestro’s for the evening. Poised on their chairs. Gold music stands erect. Fingers ready to descend and begin their tune.

Iris had heard some rumours over the years. Whisperings here and there, snatched words, spoken quick, like perfume escaping onto the breeze, of the sheer torture that was the two hours of the four unwed Elton daughters, taking to their instruments apiece, to play for their gathered audience. She never gave much stock to rumours.

She wished she had.

No one had told her the, _noises_ \- for lack of a kinder remark - that erupted from that makeshift stage tonight, would be similar to that of a cluster of tone deaf stampeding sheep, let loose on a cello, two violins, and a pianoforte.

From the first moment the Elton girls bows or fingers touched their instruments, Iris had wished she had never been born- matter of fact, she wished her great grandfather had never set eyes on her great grandmother. That’s how vehemently she felt.

Furthermore, Iris wishes to go back in time and thoroughly beat to death with her fan, the person who decided that mankind should evolve to have ears. She’d make that poor soul regret it.

They hosted this Musicale every year. Apparently. Annually. And no one had yet declared to inform the ladies they were all terribly horrifically and pointedly unaccomplished at music.

No one had the temerity to suggest such a thing. So, they played on with such stalwart determination, it was almost admirable.

Almost being the optimum word.

Iris tries not to let her face crinkle into too many obvious winces as the pianists hands slip to yet another flat and wrong key. Or when the violin bow strangles out the whining sound of the wrong note.

When the eldest Elton started to open her mouth to sing along to the Handel piece they were slaughtering and stomping their way through, Iris distinctly thought she heard all the glass in the room whine as if ready to hum and shatter.

The chandelier above ready to hail like daggers of icy stinging rain. It was tumultuous to hazard that her voice may indeed shatter the champagne glasses on the end table to shards.

Matter of fact she’s sure the entire audience collectively winced at the intimation of singing that was screeching out Eunice Elton’s mouth like the worst sort of banshee. It was a slight comfort to her, that she wasn’t alone in this cruel regard.

She tried to think charitable thoughts. Really she did. She herself is not the most accomplished girl on the pianoforte. She can just about bluff her way through a Mozart piece well enough. And she’s not a terrible song bird. A couple of chorus’s of ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ was her one master stroke as far as music is concerned. She knew her limits.

The poor Elton girls had not yet been fed the bitter truth of how terrible they were.

Lady Elton declares she rarely heard any music, not finer playing, that awarded her such thrilling delight.

Iris felt Lady Elton’s use of the word ‘ _playing_ ’ was indeed applied far too liberally. Butchery seemed more fitting. Her now bleeding ears were certainly inclined to agree.

So, as much as she loathes it’s, she sits there, frowning and wincing in the dim dark of the Eltons drawing room. Sat alongside Sergeant Hux.

Her silly sisters sit the other side of her, to her left. Posy then Flora. Mother next to them. And Brendol and Maratella sat directly next to their son, on his right. Father had declined to attend tonight. Iris has never been more jealous of him. If she had the sense, she would have cried off tonight with feigning a headache.

She won’t be having to feign one after this performance is done. That is the certainty of the matter.

Hux is sat next to her. He’s of course decked out in his crisp red uniform. Iris suspects he sleeps in the damn thing. Shines his medals and his boots every morning. Intended to impress and shout volumes of his valour, she’s sure.

She’s in one of her silk numbers tonight. Pearls and white ribbon wound into her hair to bring out the honey tones of it. Iris is fairly certain there aren’t any such tones. Just the dressmakers obnoxious way of selling her mother the most expensive Indian silk.

She’s wearing a marigold-mustard yellow silk dress with a long train. Icy Van Dyke lace that spikes at her scooping neckline. Another one that demurely brushed her shoulders and shows her fine ‘swan’ neck. Pearls glimmer in her ears and that same lace drapes her elbows. Trimmed like a sweet dusting of icing sugar on her arms. White satin gloves, embroidered stockings and golden silk slippers complete her look.

Mother had also insisted on a thin strip of beige silk ribbon tied around her neck. Adorned with a pale yellow stone set into a silver ornate broach. It hangs beautifully down to her collarbone in elaborate detail. Shifts on her chest when she breathes out. Glimmers in the light.

They all recoil again as Eunice lumbers over a very high note.

Posy snorts loudly and Iris swats at her with her folded up fan. They’ve been spluttering and giggling under their breath all night. Iris can see them trying to restrain their tears of mirth. Shining sticky wet off the stage lights in their eyes. Dribbling over their cheeks.

When their snorting doesn’t cease. Hux frowns a side-wards look across her at her sisters noise.

Iris flashes him a sweet smile. Kicks Posy in the shin for good measure.

They bite their lips to keep from any further outbursts. Waify little bodies straining to suppress their giggles. Backs bowing with wracking laughter.

Iris opens her fan and wafts it in her face. Hoping the shifting air will help. What it will help she’s no clue. Maybe distract Hux from hearing her sister’s laughs of amusement. Or maybe it will hopefully distract from the violin solo that’s setting many jaws in the room on gritted edge. Eyes will start to water soon-

Blessedly, the first half shudders to a clumsy stamping close. The pianist is a little too conflicted about deciding on the final note to end on. She picks atleast three. And then embellishes with a flurry of a crescendo. Only coming to a halt after the crowd almost claps several times. Gladly doing so in joy when silence reigns heavy once again.

She’s never heard such a relived round of applause in all her life. The air in the room suddenly lifted with all the exhales of solace. Indeed some loyal friends to the Elton’s wondered why they bothered coming each and every year to show support. Yet. Here they all are. More fool the lot of them.

Everyone mutters and retires to the adjacent ballroom to take refreshment and repose in light conversation. Footmen pass around champagne and dainty glass cups of negus punch and cordials.

Hux leads her into the room on his arm. Acting like the most attentive suitor ever to draw breath. He fetched her a glass of punch. He stood and introduced her his friends in the Militia. The men that made up the 37th, North Hampshire, regiment of foot. He told her that her dress was pretty when they gathered to head out to the musicale tonight. And then that was about as much attention as he paid her.

He talked over her to his friends most of the evening and barely turned his head to acknowledge her presence.

She stood there feeling very much like a lemon in her gold gown. Watching Mama and Mrs Hux boast and preen to their crowd of friends about the fine match. Posy and Flora had enchanted two soldiers into fetching them a glass of punch each. They grin and whisper wildly to each other about the men they’ve snared attention from.

Iris feels like she’s in Dante’s seventh circle of hell. Or, more precisely, one of his lesser known philosophical musings; The sixth outer hexagon of awkwardness.

Especially as she heard the gaggle of red uniformed men cackle gruffly behind her back when Armitage walked her away.

Their hushed words grit her teeth. She couldn’t hear them. But she wasn’t stupid. They were young men in their prime. Foxes in a hen coop. They took great pleasure in assessing her comely feminine qualities. The ampleness of her bosom or her rear. Said what a pretty wife she’d make. Laughed about Hux being so lucky as to get her on her back in the marital bed.

Hux makes no such apology or excuse for the whispers she hears coming from his men as they exit the soldiers company.

She grinds her teeth. Glides along on his arm like the titivating silk swathed swan she’s supposed to be emulating. Keeps her sensible strong tongue clamped back between her grit teeth. Her blood pulses at her temples. She wants to rage. But she has to put more energy into focusing on being pretty.

Her remark about being in the landscape of hell came far too early. For she still had another half of the musicale to sit through.

She retakes her seat, and a wave of nausea and distress passes over her once more. The velvet curtains part once again, and the second half of hell begins anew. Abounding with an unfortunate renewed vigour.

She suffers it right to the unfulfilling end. Every screeching wrong note and stumbled key. Her body lurches with satisfaction when that red velvet curtain gets pulled across far too slowly.

She claps loudly. Loud enough to wake the hounds of hell. Exhaling through her mouth gladly. The enormity of her relief made her feel sorry for the girls who stand and curtsey politely to their adoring audience.

Their mother is proud of them. Seated front row. Smiling dearly at her children. That stabs a dagger to slice into Iris’s heartstrings. They play so ill and yet their mother sits there with a face full of smiles and love like she couldn’t be prouder. Admiration. Adoration.

That must be so encouraging for them. She wonders how that feels.

Iris feels like she’s wedged between two dismal walls of ice. Caught between her frosty mother. And the disinterested suitor. She feels like a pawn. A chess piece being moved in a game that she was not playing by her own design. A grey lump of sadness sits heavy in her throat. She’s never felt more claustrophobic. Or trapped.

They retire from the room, and there is dancing and light refreshment to be had in the Elton’s dining room. Iris wants absolutely nothing to do with it. Any of it. She tries to be jovial and delightful. But suffering with and lugging around a sore heart gets exhausting. It hurts.

She turns to Hux when everyone is gathered. “If you’d excuse me. I think I must retire early. I have a headache.” She explains nicely. Gently laying her gloved hand on his arm.

He couldn’t look less moved if he tried. “I see. I shall escort you back.” He pledges offhandedly. “This party is growing dull anyway.” He offers boredly.

“I shouldn’t wish to deprive you.” She adds.

He glances a shrug. “Allow me.”

They tell mama of her sore head. She makes her pinched face of annoyance. One that lets Iris know she’s in for an aching earful of a chiding in the coach, and thus moves to see her daughter safely home.

Hux tells her he’s happy to escort her back. It is barely a ten minute coach journey. Maratella encourages it. Saying the Ashton ladies can come back with them later. They did have the two carriages after all, she is quick to boast.

Iris thanks their host, Hux fetches their cloaks from the coat room. He puts his own on and doesn’t help her. Instead he fussed with his gloves and makes sure his uniform sits straight. When they step out into the icy night air and it pulls up for them, He lets himself into the carriage first.

She’s left following in his wake. Understanding where abouts she falls in this courtship.

The carriage breaks away into the black night. She glances up the at the handsome house of the Elton’s as it disappears from view in a great flash of beige brick. Her eyes settle on the grand sculpted box maze at the front of their estate driveway. Her heart leaps crazily like a fool into her throat.

The dark shape of a hulking tall man clings to the edge of the maze. Shrouded in shadow. But she knew that face and that stance anywhere. Lord Ren. Stood in the dark. In his great black overcoat. Watching their carriage roll along the drive.

He crooks that seductive smirk at her as they lock eyes.

She shifts closer to look out the window. Infuriatingly enough, they pass by a tree that blocks her view and when she looks again- there’s nothing but shadows.

Her breath calms where it once caught in her chest. Her palm presses to the cold glass.

She swore she saw him. Plain as day. She saw the dew shining on his black knee boots.The wind shifting at his hair. Fussing at his collar. His eyes glittering in the dark. She must be going insane. Finding glimpses of him everywhere she goes.

Silence reigns. And she uses it to her advantage.

She uses it to try and get on an even footing of understanding about this match to Hux. Between the clop of the horses hooves and the rumble of the creaking carriage, she inserts her words.

She’s huddled into the unforgiving cracked and cold black leather bench. Quite freezing in fact. She remarks in her mind on the lack of a wolf pelt to keep her cosy. Rubbing her hands together to generate some warmth from her satin gloved palms.

If he were a finer man, he might have offered her his coat. Or helped her up onto the carriage. Or give a damn about the fact she has a headache. Iris isn’t entirely uncertain in all honesty, that he can’t be ruled out as the cause of her suffering affliction.

“Your mother tells me you are off overseas soon?”

“Canada.” He confirms. “My regiment are to set sail in the autumn.” He tells her. Carrying on the British influence thereabouts. He’d long since missed the conflict of the last year. The very minor theatre and the final scraps of the Napoleonic war.

She nods. “My family want me married and my wife safely installed with my heir before I go. Continue my line and keep the honour of my family intact.” He tells her honestly.

Her headache spears worse into her temples.

“I see-“ She says. Rather taken aback by his blunt acerbity.

“Miss Ashton. You can’t be so missish as not to know this match of ours is entirely designed and intended to end in marriage.” He states openly. Face looking surprisingly un-emotive.

“I am perfectly aware. Sergeant.” She offers back. A little sharply. She has a vast deal more than just cotton wool between her ears. Better let him see that commodity of hers now. See if it repulses him like it did everyone else. She prayed Hux wasn’t looking for a stupid wife.

“I think it could be a good match.” He supposes. Iris offers no answer to that.

“A match built on love and trust?” She asks with an expected note of hope.

He scoffs. That right there, the cut and thrust of her desired answer.

“Love and sentiment is a waste of time Miss Ashton. Better two people who have a duty to perform. I will hold up my end of that. And I’d like to appreciate you do the same, as my wife.” He informs.

Stuck to her duty and guard her tongue. She is to fall silent and stupid and merely arch her legs for her future husband to use her cruelly as a dumping ground for his seed and his heirs. How very romantic minded.

“At the very least. A marriage cannot function healthily without respect from either partner.” She informs him.

“Surely it is the height of folly to expect a great love and passion from such a decent pairing?” He asks.

“I believe that a little affection and fondness can go a long way. Indeed. It certainly makes life more bearable.” She tells firmly.

“Then that is a silly feminine expectation you behold. This is _not_ a love match. Miss Ashton. It is to be a marriage of convenience and honour for our families. Your family is in most desperate need of our capital.” He almost mocks.

Iris’s mouth falls open in horror. Those were not the words of a gentleman or a simpering suitor.

“And I need an untarnished woman of healthy age and good breeding. I apologise reverently if that is an offensive complaint to you. But that is the crux of the matter in which we find ourselves placed.” He tells her stiffly.

“And I am done discussing this. It does you no good to fret over what’s to come.” He tells her. Effectively shutting her up.

Iris bristles. She doesn’t want to be shut up. Boxed into her silence like a neat little wife. Her skin prickles with the anger and need to retaliate. He wanted a quiet docile woman? He should’ve looked elsewhere.

“I do not believe it is silly or feminine to be held in respect by the man I shall wed myself too.” She makes plain.

“In fact I believe if such roles were reserved, you would demand that your wife respect you at every turn. At the very least. So must I be any different with what I want to achieve out of my marriage?” She asks.

Face firmly set with determination. Eyes flash wet and white silver in the dark at him. She lets that wilful stubborn tilt of her chin be known.

“You are a woman.” Hux tells her. As if that should be enough of an answer.

“Excellently noticed.” She growls back. “And that.” She says. “Was _not_ an answer.” She narrows her eyes nastily.

He looks taken aback. As if a woman has never dared correct him before. She’s glad to think she might be the first.

“Are you always this adamant?” Hux asks with a sneer. It was jolly amusing. She had spirit, he’d give her that.

“And are you always so unfeeling, Sergeant?” She fires back. He makes no answer. She does so for him.

“So long as you continue to be loveless. I shall continue to be adamant.” She declares. “Taking a wife is not one of your military campaigns.” She snaps.

“Lord save me from stubborn girls...” He mutters under his breath. Running a hand through his hair in exasperation.

“This is getting us nowhere, Miss Ashton. Let me speak plainly. When we marry...” he starts.

“ _If_ ” Iris feels like spitting at him.

“We will do as we are duty bound. At the very least. I expect you not to fight me on such matters. It is my conjugal right after all. To be made welcome to my wife’s bed.” He insists. She rather wants to spit in his eye.

“Though you may wish to fight me on everything else. I’d remind you to put aside silly stubbornness and submit to being my wife. You will have money. Title. Influence. What more could you possibly hope to gain?” He asks. Keeping eye contact with her.

‘ _Love_ ’ is the only word that flutters through her head.

But she can’t love him.

Not him. Not like that. Here he sits in his mighty uniform, talking down to her about demanding a very basic human principle of relationships. Was it really so much to ask for?

“Is my wanting to be respected by a suitor such a terrible thing?” She asks.

“I never said I don’t respect you. Miss Ashton.” He points out. “I am merely making you aware that our match will never concern love.” He warns.

She believes otherwise as to his respect of her. His manner this evening was so uninvolved and stiff. Regimented. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had no regard for her one iota. She’s just the next logical stepping stone in the firm line of his family duty. She’s a target. A mission.

“I thank you greatly for the edifying clarification.” She insists quietly.

Turning her attention to the window. She didn’t wish to be locking antlers with him for their whole marriage. She wasn’t the sort of girl to spit fury and snipe at someone. Let alone someone she’ll be intended too. She won’t exist as a determined harridan ready to snarl at her husband all the live long day. She hasn’t the energy.

She knows and had associated with, and knew people who had marriages of convenience, whereby if they saw one another in a day, they were lucky. She knows plenty of couples who let nothing but poison drip off their tongues aimed at each other. They exist in great cold grand houses in miserable stiff silence. That’s all that’s borne between them.

Wealthy people of the ton seemed to exist around each other like outlying planets in orbit. Only seeing one another in passing, far off in the distance. In-between them and their separate bedrooms, lives, and marriage, scurried maids, and valets and other members of staff. Of whom spent more time with their masters, than the person who they’d married.

To Iris, It seemed almost inhumane.

Next time, the only remark she would make upon the silence to improve it, would be an idle comment about the weather. She’s determined.

Maybe she did make a fuss if the situation. Maybe her temper got too passionate. But something about a loveless marriage fills her with horror. She rails so against it because she firmly feels there should be more to life than living an artless and stony-hearted one. There has to be more to it than that-

A sudden crack rips violent through the air. She braces her arms on the bench and the side of the window nearest her. The coach jerks and shudders. Catching them off guard.

Hux is almost thrown off his bench and colliding directly into her knees. She scoots backwards up the seat. His chest almost coming to hers. She gasps. Affronted. His medals and buttons stabbing her cold in the chest. Warm red wool of his coat rubbing her.

He collects himself as the coach judders to a shaky halt. The horses shriek and stomp in complaint. Hux angrily pounds on the roof. “What the hell is going on, Wilkins?” He snarls. Before getting to the door and throwing it open in a frothing rage.

They are stopped on the icy road. In the middle of a forest as black as night. The trees are gnarled and dead and devoid of leaves. Curled up to the open pearly moon like dead spiders legs. The forest seems so close out here. Eerily so. It’s blessedly quiet. As if every bird or animal has been chased away. Or been strangled to silence by something lurking under the trees nearby- something dark that prowls.

Iris stays pinned to the seat, watching Hux get out to angrily berate his coach driver. She listens to him chide and rip chunks out of the man.

She sighs and opens the carriage, getting out herself. The door creaks as she steps down, her blue velvet cloak unfurls around her sides. She picks her dainty slippered feet down the stand, and sets them gently into the frosty road. The cool sends a shiver up her legs. Right up her chemise and biting at her stockings.

She shuts the door after her, turning around, she catches sight of the severity of the problem. The back right carriage wheel was entirely missing. It had come loose. Spun clean off the carriage. She sees something sharp and shiny near her foot. She reached down and picks up the pin that secured the wheel to the carriage. Weights it in her palm. Grit and mud getting on her gloves. She straightens up.

Iris stepped back and looked down the road they’d driven down. An eerie fog swirls and circles the road up ahead. Lapping at her ankles like a curling white tongue.

A hand yanking to her elbow drags her back. Her skin pinched in pain.

A yelp leaves her mouth. A startled yelp that echoes out into the forest. Hux spins her into his arms.

“What do you think you’re playing at? Get back in the coach this instant.”

She recoils at being manhandled so viciously. Snatched her arm back out of his.

“I thought I might help. Anger won’t solve anything.” She comments wryly.

“I don’t require _your_ help. Get back into the carriage.” He dismisses tersely.

Before he can turn fully away, she shoves the metal rod in his hand.

“You might need this. The wheel is probably undamaged. Just the pin holding it there was most likely rattled loose. You may find it back up the road a way.” She says snappily. She sees it all the time in their trap carts on the farm.

She turns away. Hoists up her skirts with a huff. Ready to step back up into the coach.

Hux looks fairly sheepish at the item she placed in his hand. _Good_.

She’s just got her foot on the stand, holds the handle strap to haul herself in. When something rustles in the bushes and undergrowth beside them. Something snapping twigs. Rustling the leaves on the hard unyielding ground.

A low sound rumbles out the trees. It’s the most bone chilling growl Iris has ever heard. She turns her head slowly around and there. In the woods. A glowing golden pair of eyes glimmer out the foggy dark.

“What the devil-“ Hux starts. The tone of his voice is shrill with panic.

The driver tries to call the horses as their ears twitch and they grow rightfully restless. They nicker in fear. Ears swivelling. Snorting and stamping to get away.

It’s the nearest thing to a devil Hux will ever see.

The growling dark shape looms out the trees. Padding closer. Iris looks the beast right in the eyes. Hux’s mouth gapes wide open as they watch the magnificently large wolf walk casually out of the treeline.

It’s slobbering maw is shining in the dull light. Ears pinned back. Growling. Stalking towards Armitage.

“Iris get back in the coach.” Hux hisses at her. The growling from the creature intensifies. Eyes set on the pumping peril of Hux’s jugular.

Hux’s hand is slipping under his cloak. Going for his belt. Where his pistol sat. Iris wasn’t looking at him. She was transfixed in those feral yellow-gold eyes.

She shakes her head. Too frightened. Yet, oddly she doesn’t want to run away. She just wants to look at this familiar enormous creature. Some small part of her feels like she has an affinity with it.

Hux grabs her wrist. “Get in the coach now you stupid girl. Or I will _make_ you!” She snaps loudly. Shoving her back cruelly into the coach. Rudely walking into her. Uncaring if he causes her injury.

The beast snaps it’s teeth in a slobbering bark at Hux. He jumps. Unsheathing his flintlock pistol from underneath his cloak. Shoving the covering cape of it out his way. Cocking his pistol directly at the creature.

Iris dives for his arm. “No!” She puts herself between the wolf. Puts her back to it. Faces Hux. Hair torn out of her coiffure. Curls straying down her neck. Ragged. Wild. Her voice is desperate. Wide eyes shining and pleading with him.

“No please! Armitage don’t hurt it. Please!” She begs. He frowns down at her, disgusted.

“You want me to show mercy to this thing that’s slaughtered men?” He scoffs. “Get out of my way. They’ll give me a bloody medal for killing this beast.” He rudely and powerfully shoved her aside.

Sweeping her away with a solid knock of his sturdy coated arm. Of course. How dare she get in the way of his valiance. She staggers back. Whipping around in time to see the wolf crouch down low.

Hux sneers at the creature. Pointing the gun. “Look away Iris, you won’t want to see this...” He promises.

The wolf lunges. Hux fires a shot and Iris’s every nerve jolts, black and sickening in her body.

A yelping “ _No!”_ Sails out her mouth. She doesn’t move but her entire being shatters and cracks like glass.

She shrinks back to the coach, seeing Hux knocked flat on his back. The wolf close to him. Between his legs.

Growling. Unhurt. The pistol lays discharged many feet away.

The creature had snatched it out his hands. It raises its head and regards her, calm stance returning.

She looks into those eyes again. The ones that stand out of that cold night like warm yellow butter. She can’t decide how she feels about this animal. It seems aware of never hurting her. It looks right at her too. Seeing her. The only thing that’s ever seen her as a whole.

There’s a second or two before it turns away and sprints off into the trees. Moulds back into the night it came out of.

Iris watches the fog swirl around the shape where it had once been. The pad of its giant paws thumping away as it runs back in the forest.

The horses are still baying and wild. Wanting to leave. Hux angrily shoves himself to his feet. Brushing off his now sullied uniform.

“When we are wed. Don’t you ever _dare_ disobey me like that again.” He snarls.

She’s beginning to think that wolf wasn’t the beast, after all. The cruelest beast with the nastiest temper of all? It stands right here before her.

She can’t help nor escape the premonition that this had all been a warning somehow. Not just of what’s to come, but a startling glimpse into how she’ll be treated as a wife. Willed into being obedient.

Eventually, Hux sees her home. The wheel is mended and the carriage works to everyone’s satisfaction once again. They drive the rest of the icy route in bitter silence. His ego doubtless wounded by tonight’s troubling events.

As they pull up to Westwell to let her out. He offers nothing but a snippy “Goodnight.” Shoved morosely in her direction. Barely even turned his head. She’s left looking at the pale sharp profile as he sits still. Mood sour. The coach door slams after her and tears away quickly.

She sighs after he leaves. Watching the moonlight bounce off the rocking black roof. Tears and grit teeth as she watches it move away into the night. Glad of it and hating so vehemently with every ounce of her soul that all of this is still happening. Match was doomed to go ahead.

“Good riddance...” She spits in the direction of the coach. Secretly to herself with a whisper. Her one self-indulgence of her true spirit.

She trudges up the petticoat tiled, gravel laid frosted path to the steps. And Julia is already there. Opening the door to let her in. Iris steps into the warm foyer and sheds her cloak and gloves. She apologised for the mud on her satin kid skin gloves.

The warm wood of Westwells foyer floor shines with the lemon-amber of the fire in the entryway hearth. Heating the air as soon as any visitors step in from the cold night out of doors. Iris is glad for it. But now she really just needs the ideal splendour of her quiet room and a cup of tea to take away the stresses of her day.

“I’ll bring it to your room directly.” Julia bobs a curtsey and slips away to the kitchens.

Iris trudges upstairs. Already kicking off her slippers and taking out her earrings as she goes. Old wobbly stairs creaking and cracking under her weight. She knows every sound those warped old stairs make, off by heart.

She pushes open the door to her bedroom. Slips inside. Julia or Meg have lit the candles by her bed, and banked the fire. It roars softly and her room is gently warm.

With a glum sigh she reaches the fastenings on her dress and begins to unlace them as best she can. Julia’s treads up the stairs interrupt her. She sets down a saucer of tea and helps Iris off with her gown and stays. Asking her about her evening.

She answers succinctly. Says she needs to sleep off a headache. Julia takes that as her answer and whisks her gown away to be washed and pressed. Iris thanks her. Looping her stays over the chair by her vanity dresser. She sits on the end of her bed. Stares ahead into flames.

Peeling off her wool stockings and garters to the soundtrack of the popping snapping fire. Logs smoulder to ash. She sits and watches them as she undoes her chemise and slips on her nightgown. The one that’s seen better days. There’s a hole in the hem. She does up the drawstring neck. It still slips off one shoulder. It’s far too stretched and almost worn thin. But she does so love it. It’s cosy.

She locks her door. Slips into bed. Covers crumpling and rustling around her. And she drinks her tea. The curtains are pulled almost closed and as always her window is open to let the heat out.

Iris shuffles down in her bed and rests her pounding head. She falls quickly to dreams. They swallow her up quick.

She didn’t know that her open window not only let the heat, out- but it also let big hulking vampires, in.

His thick fingers curl under the sash window and lift it up. It barely makes a squeak. He slips inside. Quick and silent. Sneaky as smoke.

He brings a great drift of the cold night air with him. But she doesn’t wake. She won’t ever when he comes. He’ll always safely ensure that.

He passes the end of the bed. Drifting air from his body disturbs the thick gold canopy curtains. He puts his hand on the mahogany poster.

“Hello my Dove.” He says softly to the bed before him. To his sleeping lover. Curled up safe. Face relaxed in peace. He likes seeing her so contented. When she wakes she has troubles and woes and stress heaped upon her.

Here, she is completely at peace. And that’s what he loves to see. It gives him calm too.

“I took the liberty of coming to check on you.” He tells her. Moving around the bed as he so often does. Coming to sit by her side.

“Especially after the way that imbecile treated you tonight. The way he made you feel.” He growls. “Handling you like that.” He stated sourly. Shaking his head.

He remembers her yelp when that bastard gripped her wrist. He heard it from a mile away. Felt it too. The painful grating of her bones. The white-hot sore pain of it. He was tempted to take the bastards leg off with one bite.

“Made you sound like his cheap broodmare. I’m almost remorseful I stopped where I did. Before I could have had the chance to rip his throat out.” He strokes at her cheek.

“How valiantly you tried to protect me tonight. Sweet dove.” He smiles and aches at the thought.

She shielded the creature that couldn’t be harmed, with her own tender body. No one had ever tried to shroud him from pain like that before. No one had cared.

No one had ever cared about the beast.

“So often I find I settle in my bed to rest at night, and your face is the one that comes to me, behind closed eyes.” He explains.

“I cannot rest until I know you are well. My temper and well being is tied to you, my dove. I wish you could know that. How soothing it is for me just to _see_ you. How the mere sight of you eases my mind.” He explains.

“I wonder if you do the same?” He asks. Wonders if she sees him in her sleep. If the sight of him keeps her calm.

His hand strokes her face. Skimming her cheekbone.

She mumbles. Turns on her side. Curling into him. Gravitates to him like magnets. “Maybe you will after tonight.” He hopes deeply.

He knows he can tempt her with a dream or two. He knows he can draw out what she feels for him. A sacred little erotic secret of her lust. A vampire’s kiss was a magically dark gift. An opiate. A touch designed to enchant.

She mumbles again. Tilts her face into the cradle of his whole cold hand. Her warm soft cheek kisses into his palm.

He confesses something quietly then. “When I’m around you Iris, you make me feel less like the savage beast that I truly am.” He comments. He frowns. Perplexed.

“How do you do it? Smile at me the way you do? Make me feel, so, unendingly...” Here he chokes on the word “Alive.”

He looks at her resting face in the amber and black of firelight and dark. Sees the spill of shadows from her eyelashes casting spidery shade down her warm cheeks.

He can’t resist any longer. Maybe a better man would have tried. The animal in him knows no such honour.

“I said I dreamt of you, and now I’m going to show it to you.” He moves in closer.

“Here, have a taste, little dove.” His eyes flicker up her face, he leans down and tips her chin up to let her lips meet. He lets his breath flutter over her mouth.

She gasps when his hand touches her neck. Gently cupping her like she’s the most precious opus on earth. Like she’s made of fragile eggshell glass that will shatter under his brute hands. The hands that can crush rock, snap bone and break steel.

When her lips part, he so sweetly brings his lips to hers. Indulges her in the most languid kiss. He sighs. His face is drawn in pleasure that almost looks akin to agony in his expression. Shocks and sparks zip right through his body like fine sparkling champagne.

She’s _everything-_

She’s like rainfall on his dry parched lips. Bittersweet of hot summer rain. Amber honey. Sugared exotic Italian peaches that grow juicy and ripe under some tuscan country sun. Buttery yellow nectar from the cup of some elegant flower, with petals that drips thick thick pollen. All the things that are good and pure in his life, she tastes like every single one of them.

He takes the chance to slide his hungry tongue in her mouth. Brushing his against the silk of hers. Plunging into her hot mouth. He’s willing to bet no man has ever kissed her like this. He smiles thinking that he’s the first.

The instant his tongue brushed hers, she’s taken. Taken by a dream. A vision.

A vision of them together. One his enchanting senses can conjure up. He draws out her demure lust that she’s been taught to lock down deep and gives it an explosive and crudely beautiful awakening.

She’s writhing on the bed already, spine humming with wracking shivers. One touch was all it took.

He breaks away, watching her. His big chest is panting as he watches her fidget and toss her head on the bed. Skin shimmering amber in the sweat from the fire.

“Can you see us?” He asks in wonder. Cupping and stroking her head. His hot lips ghost breath over her cheek.

Iris has never had an erotic thought in her life. Much less an erotic dream. But the image in her head was the most arousing thing she had ever witnessed.

It was her bedroom. Only she wasn’t alone as she usually was. She’s on the bed and the poster drapes are drawn. Offering limited sliced views of the very occupied mattress. She was very much _not_ alone.

She’s locked and joined with another. A big broad brute of a man is above her. She’s splayed out in the middle of her mattress, atop a rumpled rosebud eiderdown, the one she’s had since childhood. Only she is not indulging in childish activities...

Her and this man, They are very much naked.

She gasps when she sees its him. Lord Ren. _Kylo_.

She’s on her back. Her hips pried open, thighs bunched up to her body, legs curled up around this huge man’s back. Her unbound hair spills across the pillow. His dark head is bowed down, kissing at her breast, sucking her neck. Leaving shiny trails carved down her skin.

He has alabaster skin. Pale as pearl marble and just as strong. This gorgeous man. He’s so wide he blocks her from the firelights reach. Traps her under the enormous immensity of his body. Rubbing and rutting into her.

Head to toe of him is packed with tense powerful muscle, from his straining thighs to his corded huge back. She blushes catching sight of the thin covers slipping criminally low off his hips as he moves. Uncovering the firm globes of his masculine ass. His skin is alabaster-amber. They both are. Kissed sweaty by the light of the fire.

The air is thick. Like pea soup thick. Wet fog. Laden with rasping moans and gasps and the creaking crack of her old wood bed where it scrapes the floor.

The mattress shudders with the thrusts of his hips. She can hear the feathers in her covers rustling. She can hear wet liquid slaps coming from them, sloshing over the room. He drinks in the moans from her lips.

She looks to his back. His elegant perfect back. The one that looks sinful in his coats and his waistcoats. Here he is free of civility. This is carnal. Pure and simple carnality.

He’s marred with moles on his back. And scars. Three pink-silver slashes of long since healed scars. Put there by a feral beast. Ancient claw marks that rake down his shoulder. She’s seen those scars before. She admires the sight of him so openly.

There’s no other man built like that. No other man that’s captured her heart and her lust.

She’s making love to him. That’s what this is-

Sweating. Rhythmically thrusting and moving together. It’s hypnotic to watch. It’s like she’s stood in the room. A voyeur to this moment. Her moment. When at the same time, she is the body on the bed, under him, and she can feel everything happening to her.

She pants at the erotic sight. Kylo watches her twist in her sleep. Groaning under those covers. Fingers knotted into her sheets. Knuckles white.

He croons down at her. Whispering into her ear. He watches her chest as she pants. Sweat drips in rolls down the valley of her breasts. He wants to lick it up. “You see? We look so good entwined together don’t we?”

If she were awake, she’d be only too inclined to agree. She’d nod like she’s possessed. She’d scream. She’d yell her answer - if it was ladylike to do such a thing.

“We feel good too. So perfect. So _right_.” He tells. She feels the hard length of him inside her. Feels how he moves. How each thrust knocks pleasure into her. Rings through her body like the most delicious glorious echo. She makes a noise with each long, fulfilling, even thrust of his hips.

They writhe together on her bed. She’s watching from the side. Seeing all of it. Of this crude beautiful intimate act.

His huge palm slips up her thigh. The span of it measures all of her leg, he skims his palm up her thigh, gets her leg hooked over his gyrating hips. His movement looks beautiful. It is beautiful. The sloping curve of his back, the way he twists. Sweat pearls off every inch of him. As if he’s oiled all over with it. She’s never seen a more beautiful sight than this.

She didn’t know love making could look so, unbridled. So passionate.

Unmarried girls weren’t taught much about what happens on their wedding night. Of course Iris knew the basic anatomy of what went where. She learnt about the birds and the bees long ago, what with living on a farm the lesson was not a rare one to come by.

She was also taught, by her mother, to lie down, open her legs and submit to her husband, be welcoming. And don’t cry too loudly when it hurts-

This act doesn’t look at all like it hurts. It looks sinfully delicious.

This is everything she was taught _never_ to want. This was ruination. And disgusting. Shameful and what they preached about in church as man’s carnal lust. An appetite no better than a beasts. Something girls should never part their thighs for. Something never to be sated by a civilised being.

Kylo’s chuckling into her ear. “If wanting you like this makes me an uncivilised beast little dove? Then I will be the most horrific beast you’ve ever seen.” He promises.

A roll of pleasure passes through her like tumbling thunder rolling on the horizon.

Matter of fact she can feel this, undertaking, doesn’t hurt. She can feel her arousal instead, the hunger of a vicious fire gnawing at her belly like a burrowing animal.

She can feel her blood singing with bliss. Desire so potent her toes curl up like dry golden leaves in autumn. Her spine is alive with thrashing keen feelings.

There’s a wet moistness growing between her thighs. Sticky. Kylo can scent it. He’s painfully aware of it. The divine taste of her cunt is something he cannot have - not yet.

Her face too, is pinched and creased up as if she’s vexed. Sweaty column of her neck tosses far back, a slow gasp leaves her mouth. Lord Ren unsticks a coil of her hair off her dewy brow, cups her face and bows his head to nose at her neck. Pushes his handsome nose under her jaw. Mumbles a benediction into her ear like a prayer. It’s almost like she can hear him...

“Look at all I can give you, Iris.” He says. It sinks into her head. Into this fantasy. “Feel what you do to me...”

She watches as he plucks her hand from clamping onto the pillow and puts it on his shoulder. “Touch me. Feel me as I take you like this.” He instructs. She claws his shoulder like that wolf did to him ten centuries ago.

Back in her bedroom. He smirks at watching the half moon sting of her nails raising welts in his shoulders. They’ll fade. But he likes experiencing the brief prickle of it.

He smiles so. Watching her in her bed. Under the covers. Gasping out. Hips shifting. He can smell the sweet wetness beading between her legs. Her arousal. How much he longs most passionately for that wet to slip like honey off his tongue- But not yet he can’t- it’s torture. Her gorgeous face is all drawn up in pleasure with this dream.

“You’re so beautiful.” He leans down and kisses her cheek. “Do you want to see even more? See us in our most bare state?” He asks.

He shows her. Her hips rear off the bed. She bucks and moans. She moans loud.

“Sssh. Shhh. My love. _Sssh_. Any louder and you’ll wake your sisters.” He counsels widely with a smirk.

“What a sight they would get- you rising off the mattress in bliss, like that, cunt dripping wet between your thighs, with my name on your lips...” He sighs at the thought.

His erection strains painful at his breeches. Pushing against his stays. Begging to opened. Desperate for stimulation.

In her head- He gives her a glimpse of just exactly how they will join together. She watches him widen her legs, spreading her wide, vulnerable. Iris can see the long fat length of him sinking into the wet pink heart of her.

His cock breaching her tight heat. The pulsing centre of her being between her legs. Where she’s pink and raw and open for him. She hears them stick and slick together. The liquid snap of their bodies meeting.

Let’s her feel how she’ll drench the bed for him.

He’s cupping her so reverently. Tenderly. Every thrust he makes with a languid roll of his big hips makes the spooled ribbon of her pleasure reel undone. He makes her gasp and beg and writhe. She has tears streaking on her cheeks, happy ones, because this is how good it feels. This is how it feels to be loved.

“Yes. Dove. This is it. _This_ is what passion is. This is what I can give to you for the rest of our lives. So help me I will not and cannot let you wed a man who won’t love you like I do.” He speaks. Voice almost breaking. His breath kissing her cheek. She nearly writhes away in her dream but he pins her to the side of his hip. Pins her to the bed.

“He’ll never love you the way I can. He’ll never be a patient or kind lover. Or treat you like the most precious thing in this whole damn world to him- but I will. Heaven help me- _I will._ ” He swears. His voice rising to a passion.

She looks on as Lord Ren bows his big body over hers on the bed. Fully clasps his chest to hers. She loops her hands around his neck. Feels his hair. His nose prods into her cheek. Faces slipping together to kiss.

He exhales in disbelief. “You want to kiss me....” He smiles.

“Dove I would kiss you until this world runs out of ages.” He pledges.

Iris watches them kiss and move and grind their bodies together. She can feel him lay sweet wet kisses onto her cheeks. Peppering her with them. From those big lips she’s so often wondered about. Longed for.

They are directly pressed together now. Kylo pulls back to stroke her hair out of her face. Thrusting deeper into her now.

She can feel his hot moans fog up the breath of her shoulder. Wet. Hot. Like calming summer rain. Only she’s burning up in her skin. He’s set a fire in her bones and it sweeps through her. Ravaging everything. Leaving her vulnerable and charred bare bones behind.

She’s crying with bliss before long. In both senses. He’s there to soothe her. Soft kisses to her ears. Hypnotised by the thrum of her blood. Sweet syrup of it gushing just under his lips. He won’t say he isn’t tempted- the rush of her blood on his tongue would catastrophically end him. But her orgasm isn’t far off. And that’s his ultimate nirvana.

“That’s it. That’s it- give in.” He encourages. Feeling the peak rise within her.

“Let me watch you come undone. My sweet girl. Sing for me...” He begs. Eyes just starting to fleck and flare honey gold. Because this is a long withheld hunger that’s finally being sated.

The dream rushes to its blissful crescendo. Iris watches them move together. Both legs wrapped around him. He’s drinking in her kisses. Cupping her neck. He loses himself in her. Their shuddering bodies pounding and slapping together. Shaking and burning and cumming so violently.

He buries his head in her shoulder, kissing, biting and not breaking the skin. Drunk off the pleasure sailing through him. He pulses and finishes his orgasm deep inside her, in her dream. Searing hot. Filling the tight channel of her womb. Her silk walls suck at him like drenched velvet.

“So wet. So sweet- So _mine_.” He smiles at her neck.

In her bedroom, Kylo watches her toes curl at her mattress. She absolutely shatters apart. Groaning his name out loud. Thighs trembling. Hands fisted in her pillows. Face dewy with sweat. Climax breaking apart every cell of her body and filling it with blissful fire.

“ _Kylo!”_ She gasps. A name she doesn’t even fully know. He loves the taste of it off her tongue. He loves how desperately she whines for him.

He has to shut his eyes as the scent of her aroused sex floods his nose. Drenching her nightgown at her thighs. Sticky hot and honey.

How he’d adore nothing more than to duck under those covers and taste her. He won’t. He wants her awake and willing when he takes her. The memory of such he will sear down into his bones to gather it for eternity.

He swallows. Opens his eyes. Watching her chest sink and rise. He had no doubts about her lust, but he’s starving at finding the kernel of its beginning. Her lust for him is awake now. And he’ll be only too glad to oblige her in it.

He huffs. Almost in pain. “Soon. My Dove. _Soon-“_ He promises. And he is, every inch, a gentleman of his word. Leaving her side this night is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.

Iris’s eyes snap open. She sits bolt upright in her bed. Panting for breath that doesn’t come. She blinks. Letting her eyes adjust around the darkness of her room.

The fire burns low. Barely spitting out embers. The glow of it barely reaches the end of her bed. It’s blaze long since worn away.

She feels desperately sticky and hot in her nightgown. A most odd sensation thrive between her legs, she’s sopping wet and dripping. Gown stuck to her skin. She feels breathless and exhausted. Not as if she’s just woken from rest.

She wets her lips and falls back onto the pillows. Glimmering with dewy sweat. Clenching her thighs together. Her heartbeat races down there. At her thighs.

She can’t think what’s come over her. Restless and itchy. Like her blood wants to forever fidget uneasy in her veins.

She looks at her bedroom ceiling. Shaken to the core by her erotic dream and pleasure. Glimpses of Lord Ren’s lips and his mouth on her and how he’d kissed upon her neck- how he’d....

She shudders pleasantly with recalling it. How carnally they were joined together. She puts a hand to her sticky chest. Feels her heart hammering. Cheeks afire. Blood pushing hot scarlet into her face.

His last growl, that ursine growl, of that deep opulent voice. Back velvet and smoke. She can taste a word on her lips. As if it’s been pressed or kissed there.

“ _Soon_.”

~


	10. Tempt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 👀👀 hope this is suitably steamy for the vampire stans out there

Iris wondered if her mother would ever tire of dragging the whole bouquet of Ashton ladies to local balls.

She had wondered if her attachment to Hux would ease the strain on her somewhat - of course, it did not. It never would. No earthly thing would stop her mother from employing her influence to get her daughters out and seen in society.

Now she’s being paid court to by the most ill tempered and snippy Sergeant in all of the British isles, she has to be seen and heard and remarked upon at every gathering. A picture of health. The very picture of regency gentility and beauty.

In yet another new gown with her hair styled flawlessly. Mother had said she must appear to be the most attentive intended bride. She could not stay home and skip her duties. Mores the pity.

She has suffer it, apparently. In all it’s noxious glory.

They are bid to the Spencer’s this eve. Lady Spencer is known for her opulent balls. This one was no different.

She’s made it a purely memorable event. Nothing too gaudy. Though Iris is certain a great many number of ladies will go garishly overboard. Showcasing themselves as spectacles to be seen at one of the most anticipated social events of the year.

Lady Spencer has ordered the biggest string band London could boast of. She will offer a banquet of sugary treats so fine it would rival Versailles in its heyday. Enough roasted meats on decorative platters to feed entire armies. Sugared and dried fruits. Expensive Nuts. Such visions of culinary elegance. The champagne will flow. The brandy and the punch shall do so too.

Everything will be polished to the highest degree. The people; the staff; the house and all it’s rich contents.

Posy and Flora are terribly excited. For the Spencer’s have a hot house on their estate. They are certain the tables in the supper room will be brimming, crammed with peaches and oranges. A rare luxury.

Iris wouldn’t be surprised if they stuff something in their reticules to smuggle home.

She’s not going overboard in dress. Though mother insisted on putting enough jewels on her with which to sink a ship. If she unknowingly stepped into the path of candle light tonight, she predicts she’d blind the whole ballroom.

She had diamonds dripping from her ears. A pearl and chandelier concoction of silver dripping elegantly off her neck, down into her clavicle. Her dress tonight is a blush rosebud pink. Very faint in colour, with a severe neckline cutting away at the back. She chose a design without trims or lace or embroidery. She feels ostentatious enough. Mother huffed in annoyance. Iris didn’t care.

The only fuss Iris had agreed to bother with was the simple hair slide of ivory and paste white gems she slid into her hair. Crowning her puddle of tumbling muddy curls with something pretty. She’s happy to think she isn’t the most overstuffed girl in the ballroom.

Where they are stood on the fringes of the Spencer’s ballroom, she’s watched many other young ladies glide past. Gowns groaning with lace, diamonds shoved onto every limb and visible outcrop accessible. It’s as if every Mama here is seeking to make her daughters a sight for sore eyes.

Iris knows why that might be. There was such a crush of people in attendance. Some of the populars of London society. Had ventured this far southwest for this party. Eligible men in dire need of wives. Lords in need of Ladies and Earls in need of Countesses.

And every matron worth her salt in this room tonight, will have one of them besotted with one of her gels by the time the night is out. Lady Spencer, the very rich widow she was, and a Dowager, was making every London man see what the beauty of country manners had to offer.

“Quite garish if you ask me...” Caroline declares. Criticising the handsome ballroom and most of the people confined into it.

It was a great landscape of candlelight melting with gold. Even the servants liveries are beige trimmed with gold braiding. Her heavy crushed velvet drapes lining the windows are marigold yellow. It was quite plain Lady Spencer had read somewhere that gold was fashionable and showed off ones wealth rather well. Everything is now swimming in it.

Baroque candle stands are gold. The beige tiles of the floor cast a hazy gold in the light shade. Like the very ore itself shimmers up from between the porcelain cracks. Melting into the air. The air laden thick with it. And the elegant band playing nearby. It’s all elegance and charm. Like something out of a magical fantasy novel.

“I think Lady Spencer is merely showing off. It’s most vulgar.” She adds in distaste. Iris stands next to her. Rolling her eyes. Satin hands folded and guarded in front of her.

Mother had atleast won the battle of slipping a pearl bracelet onto her daughters satin wrist. Quite why, Iris can’t fathom.

It’s not as if a string of pearls will make Hux be any the more inclined to favour her. They were not exactly on favourable terms as per their last encounter with wolves and broken carriage wheels. No amount of pretty jewellery chucked at this situation will see it rectified.

He was supposed to be in attendance tonight. Luckily, god, if he did exist, or fate, had spared her thus far. He doesn’t seem to have turned up yet. Running fashionably late. Maybe to avoid her...

Iris is rather pleased with either of the two outcomes. Long may they stay that way.

“Lady Spencer is an unmarried woman of resources, Mama. Having married all her own children off. I think she is making a show of country society to induce others into much the same thinking.” Iris suggests.

Flora and Posy have long since snuck away to the supper room. Or are now clinging onto the coattails of some soldier. Crooning flirting words and simpering smiles at some poor doomed man. They’ll appear in half an hour. They usually do. Giddy and red cheeked off a glass of punch or champagne they weren’t allowed to have but somehow managed to sneak one anyway. Full and brimming with the latest shreds of gossip to tell her, and Mama.

Caroline’s eyes are peeled for Hux. Determined to thrust him and Iris together for as many dances as she and polite society could allow.

They move around the fringes of the ballroom and join a few familiar faces in the matrons corner.

A cluster of gold and beige french settees in the corner of the room. Taken up by plump Mamas in their muslin dresses. All with great sprouting coloured feathers sticking out their hair. As if they’ve recently had an unlucky collision with an unfortunate ostrich. Mrs Phillips and Puffin are here in attendance, aswell as Miss Smith.

Iris braces herself for the monotony of the conversation. Stood next to where her mother is sat conversing with her biddies. Most put out with the fact Hux wasn’t here yet to whisk her into a dance. Her usual frown of displeasure crowns her stony brow.

Iris doesn’t pay her much mind. She’s too busy admiring the general splendour. Their grousing and speculations flutter past her ears like flapping lost butterflies.

“There’s such a crush of people here tonight.” Miss Smith frets. Because, really, the woman was never not fretting about something. She’s fanning herself something furious. Wafting air into her face. It disturbs her hair and her eyelashes flutter.

Mrs Phillips is stroking Puffins ears. Tonight the ridiculous little dog is outfitted in a big blue teal bow. To match his Mistresses gown. She’s already feeding it little slithers of cooked meat she’s had a servant fetch especially from the supper room.

“I do so hate having to feel so rammed into a ballroom. But one must see the bigger picture, Miss Smith...” Mrs Phillips pats her friends knee.

“There is much pleasure to be had by the young, unwed folk. For they may mingle and dance and be merry as they choose. I think it gives our small society a superb airing. And it lets some london folk see us truly at our best!” She says. As if her very opinion is anointing and blessing the conversation.

“Do you not agree, Miss Ashton?” Mrs Phillips turns to her. Snowy curled ringlets of her hair jittering with the movement. “ _Oh_ , come now. Surely you must. What with your own beau in tow.” She chuckles. Referring to Hux.

Iris plasters on a fake smile. Bolsters her enthusiasm. “It is indeed most pleasing an opportunity.” She offers back.

“Where is your dashing titian-haired sergeant this evening, Miss Iris?” Miss. Smith giggles like an unmellowed green schoolgirl. All the matrons giggle with glee apart from Mama of course. She was not a one for levity.

“I believe he’s expected shortly.” Iris says sweetly with thinly veiled relief. It earns her a cross stern glare from her mothers. Eyes sticking her like pins.

“I do wager we will see some most exemplary dancing tonight.” Miss Smith declares. “We can not afford to give the London crowd a miss of how well we dance.” She adds.

“Will you dance, Miss Smith?” Iris seeks nicely. Hands folded behind her back as she asks the woman.

“I am never on anyone’s dance cards these days. And not for atleast thirty years. I find dancing most vexing. Far too laborious.” She worried.

She then looks almost upset by the notion. “As much as I’d wish too. I cannot. My head is most frail tonight. For there is a terrible ailment of the chest going around you know... I should not wish to catch it off anyone.” She panics. Fanning herself harder. Blinking too much and leaning away when a passerby walked too close.

Iris was sorry she asked. She rejoins her own silence. Sighing-

Her breath catches in her throat when she catches sight of the big body that’s just entered the room. Way way across the ballroom. Past the neat line of female and male dancers engaged in a lively scotch reel.

He was always a man so impossible to miss. Not because of his stature or the dark night-shadow void of his clothing - he seemed to favour the shadows. Just that every girl in attendance fluttered her lashes and swooned into giggles as he passed them by.

They fussed with their curls and made their appearance and dresses comely. In the hopes of snaring his attention.

As per usual. An impressive wool coat shrouds his shoulders. The rest of him is black. From the tips of his boots. All the way up the tight strain of his breeches sitting snug up his hips. Buttons gleaming. Shirt an immaculate white. Cravat like bloodied cloth tied around his neck. The diamond stud pin in its usual place. Only tonight it is a ruby.

Blood. Ash. And snow. That was his attire. And how appropriate that was.

He stands assessing the room. Whispers and gossip flourishes in the wake of his arrival. People remark once again on his rakish hair and the violently dark set of his eyes. The way he sneers. Or broods. And towers so big and strong. _Virile_ _and rich._

Iris doesn’t see the violence in those eyes as others do. She can only see their charm. Their allure. She doesn’t see the darkness that others so readily subscribe to.

He sets his eyes in her direction. Mother scoffs in annoyance. Iris pretends not to hear. Caroline puts her hand on her daughters wrist where she is stood.

“Pray, do not give him _any_ incentive to come over here and approach you.” She hisses at her daughter. Iris looks down at her. An innocent frown on her features. She shrugs out of her mothers hold.

“He certainly keeps a dark steady eye on you. Miss Ashton.” Mrs Phillips says. Miss Smith concurs.

“I wonder if any of the London ladies would suit him? Perhaps tonight he may find his paramour.” Miss Smith decides.

Iris knew there were many gently bred and rich London girls invited her tonight. Coming to take their stock of Hampshire society. She knows their customs seem strange and foreign to those born and bred from the fashionable capitals of Bath or London. Country manners seem, uncivilised and laughable to those sorts of girls.

The girls who have new dresses and ribbons for each day of the week. The girls who love among very varied society and never seem bored or unaccomplished. Those who boast about turning in certain societal circles.

She spied a great horde of them snigger as she passed them by earlier. Censuring the cut of her dress. Thinking her simple and plain where they are the diamonds of the first water. She’s merely a brainless country bumpkin who knows nothing about anything, except turnip crops and how to milk the cows. They expect her marry a dirty toothless farmer and be settled for life.

Those girls preen and fuss at seeing a man like Lord Ren impose upon the room. They angle their bodies at him without shame. They flutter lashes and stretch their smiles. Make sure their cheeks are rosy and healthy. Glowing outwards for him. Like a field of wildflowers trying to catch the sun.

He doesn’t even so much as gaze in their direction.

One of them swoons when he walks on past. Barely even giving them a curt nod. Just a cold up and down assess of his eyes as he walks on past the foul gaggle of harpies.

Iris smirks only a little as one of the air headed dowry vessels, swoons and expects to be caught by her friend. Who promptly steps to the side and doesn’t catch the heap of her. She crumpled like a sack of flour to the floor. A chorus of gasps flutter around her. Someone - all too eagerly - goes to find a vinaigrette of smelling salts to shove under the poor girls nose to revive her.

Their eyes are all stabbing into Lord Ren’s wide back and coated shoulders as he strides proudly across to Iris. Hands clasped behind his back. Uncaring if people talk. He’s learned that people here do little else.

He’s smirking smugly already at the sour glare on her mothers face intended in his direction. He smiles wider at seeing it. He does not retreat from a challenge. It is simply not in his nature.

He’s faced down worst demons and beasts than Mrs Ashton. She was however, the most severe. And the most repulsive he’s encountered in a while. But her monstrosity pales in comparison to his. She cowers behind her station in life and dares to think herself above him. Therein lies her most detrimental mistake.

Iris is almost trembling watching him come closer. She’s trying to school her breathing into being calm. She can feel the goosebumps dot her skin.

She feels chilled and burning up all at once. She clenched her thighs together a little and wets her lips. Mortified to realise that between her thighs feels all hot and sticky again.

That same hungry throbbing sensation echoed out at the centre of said thighs. A ricocheting reminder of her hot lusting-dream the other night.

The one that left her gasping in pleasure and drenching her sheets. Gasping for air that wouldn’t come. Wet. Flushed. Crying out the name of a lover who wasn’t even there. _Or so she thought._

“Iris my dear, you look flustered. Oh my goodness. Are you unwell, have you a fever, or a head complaint?” Miss Smith asks, flustered. Looking most mortified for her young friend.

“I am well.” Iris gasps in answer. Air and voice crackling out her throat. Dry and weak. Wrung out. What was happening to her?

Kylo knows.

Iris looks across to see Lord Ren smile. Eyes glittering. She’s not entirely sure she hasn’t been struck with a fever. Nothing of this acute kind she’s ever experienced before.

She has to hope with sheer alarm her nipples can’t be seen standing stiff under the thin sheen of her silk gown. Like cut diamonds. She feels like they’ll point on right through her stays and chemise. Curse her gown being so damnably fashionably thin.

She clings onto the back of settee next to her with one hand. Knuckles white under her satin gloves. He hears the thrum of her pulse shift its beat. Changing tempo. Sound of her pumping blood sickly hot in his ears. She feels woozy. Dizzy. Excited.

It’s terrifying - all of this in its potency.

When she looks up again, his eyes stroke along her skin. She almost sags to the floor. She has to rip her eyes away from his. A flashing image torments her brain. She fights off a whimper.

She can just see skin. _Naked skin._

She can see a dark head bowing to kiss at a supple pale neck that she knows has to be her own. Skin shimmering with sweat from such activities she can only guess at. Her head is thrown far back in repose. Gasping out his name. His first name. That is no thought fit for a ballroom.

Her spine rockets with the realisation that she’s now envisioning them entwined together in the most carnal and inappropriate of ways. Her brain begs her that why, if such an act was so indecorous, then why, _oh god why,_ is it the most pleasant sensation she’s ever felt?

He’s ravenous by the time he approaches her. Mouth wetting for that taste he can sense gathering honey and oozing hot between her legs. Slipping on down her innocent inner thighs.

He can taste her from all the way over here already.

He dreams of diving into all those secret ambrosial private places. Exploring the climes of her supple svelte body with his lips. That creamy skin. So divine under his hands. Settle his mouth between the twin peaks of her knees, lap at the sweet valley of wet that ran between them.

He stops when he comes to the gaggle of matrons sat before him. Bows his head. Smiles so charmingly at them all. Greets every one of them in turn. Slowly taking his time. Even Miss Smith. His well wishes drip like honey for her off his silver tongue.

Iris tries hard to conceal her smile from her mothers glare. She manages to reign her breathing enough by the time he comes to her. The scent of his cologne and mint soap washing over her. Rich and dark. Opulent. Like every aspect of him is.

He can walk right through a ball room and the supposed societal slight of shame of his doing so, sweeps off his shoulders like beading rain.

He’s rich. He’s powerful. He truly acts with all the confidence of those things behind him. She finds it intoxicating.

He reaches for Iris’s hand and kisses it. “You look exceedingly beautiful tonight Miss Ashton.” He flatters.

Her cheeks heat when she thinks upon the fact she must be the envy of several, if not all, of the London ladies in the room. And all the Hampshire ones. Iris even spotted a few young men’s eyes stick to Lord Rens back as he cut his dark carve through the room. Whether out of jealously or either out of the sheer encompassing attraction that so beguiled the ladies. Everyone admired him. Everyone is in awe.

Seeing her hand in his, sends a ricocheting wave of feeling to flutter through her. Like warm melting butter. She blinks and loses her breath a fraction when their palms touch. Erotic friction heats her skin. She shivers with it.

“You are very kind, your lordship.” Iris declares. That smile of hers always so gentle. Apples of her cheeks kissed so pink with the thrill of his nearness.

Only he knows how thrilled. He can smell her arousal. Plain as day.

He doesn’t pay any mind to the rotting sugared perfume of violets and roses that all those ineffectual London girls behind his shoulder are wearing. He doesn’t care for any of that. He abhors it. He can only focus on his sweet little dove and the scent of her lust.

How fully she is now feeling the seduction of one of the most powerful vampires in existence.

“Your suitor isn’t in attendance tonight?” He asks. Loves how that makes Mrs Ashton’s jaw twitch. Eyes turning foul like silver needles that dagger straight and sharp at him.

“He is expected presently at any moment.” Caroline pipes up angrily. Talking over Iris. Snapping her words carefully. Kylo can hear the cracking scrape of her grit teeth. Jaw clenched so tight he’s amazed her bones aren’t grated to dust yet.

“Indeed. Though terribly remiss of him to leave such a beautiful partner in want of a dance.” He decides. Iris peers up at him. Smile building. His smirk is tipped up at the corner.

“I wonder, would you dance with me, Miss Ashton?” He asks. Twisting the knife in the wound of her mothers festering disapproval.

Iris smiles. “I’d be delighted.” She answers. He begins to lead her away. Kylo fancies he can see steam pour out her mothers ears.

“I’m afraid she is promised to another for this dance.” Caroline all but shrieks at them. Now it was Kylo’s turn to twist back and grit his teeth at her. His eyes turn to hard unyielding obsidian stone. Roughly cut.

“I believe you are mistaken, Mama. My dance card is quite empty.” Iris looks coolly at her relative. Eyes calm and she has that resolute tilt of her chin that Caroline so often curses.

She may very well pay for the insolence of her words to her later. But right there, she doesn’t pay any consequence to her actions. Later doesn’t exist. There is only now. With him.

“I’ve every confidence Lord Ren will return me to your side once he’s finished with me. He is a gentleman after all.” Iris supposed.

She then turns her back on them all and let’s him lead her to the cleared space of the dance floor. Taking a deep breath as he then draws her arm closer.

Kylo smiles across at her. “I probably shouldn’t find your getting cross with your mother so alluring.” He whispers close to her ear. “But as it is now aiding in my benefit, I find I cannot summon the will to argue against it.” He smiles nicely.

Iris blushes. He’d called her alluring. The compliment warned her like much too heady champagne on an echoing empty stomach. Fizzed and boiled her blood.

“I cannot pretend I agree with her acerbity for even one second. How can I deny such a splendid invite to dance?” She asks.

And, _oh, and..._ He isn’t wearing gloves.

The sinful contact of his hand brushing against the seam of her elbow where her gloves end makes her skin erupt again. Plus they are walking very closely pressed together. Her chest heaves again. She can’t help it. Cheeks glaring pink. Yet something else flashes in her minds eye.

Another stunning erotic glimpse. She sees those big hands cupping her body. Taking her waist as his big form moves above her. One big grip of his crushing a breast as his lips kiss around the other. Circling her nipple with wet sultry kisses. Revering her. Worshipping her naked body.

She stumbled a little next to him. Almost lightheaded. Of course his strong arm was there to aid in catching her. “Something amiss?” He enquires with a slithering savage smile that knows it handsomeness.

She swallows. “Thankyou. I am, fine. Just- lost my footing.” She lies. Willing the thought to die.

Her body took a little longer to subside from the eagerness of her indecent glimpses. It seemed to happen every time he touched her skin.

They position on the wide clear spread of the dance floor where other ladies and gentlemen are gathering. They stand in step as the next dance starts up.

Iris feels an almost rotten sadness spread through her like a cloud of poison where their hands part for just a second. It makes her heart thud absolutely like thunder in her chest. They take their places to dance to the very unfortunately named steps of Mr Beveridges maggot. A triple time movement where partners move and switch with each other accordingly.

She looks across at him. Standing there. Tall and smiling softly across at her. She’s never seen him dance before. Not at any gathering. She feels wholly flattered he’d selected this monumental occasion to share with her. She’s almost certain she could be the envy of the whole room.

Her eyes dart over his massive shoulder. The groups of gathered London girls are glaring daggers at her. Snide whispers dripping nastily from their mouths. Unable to understand why she’d been chosen to dance the second with him, and not them. She’s sure she doesn’t need to know the vile words being snarled behind her back in disdain. She’s sure she doesn’t even care.

Not with this man opposite her, smiling at her the way he does.

She curtseys and he bows. It’s how the dance opens. The fluttering notes of music swim around that great big gold room.

The music continues past its chirping opening notes, a slow violin and viola piece. They cross over and change places. When they turn to retake each other’s hands, she goes weak when they touch again, sparks shimmer along her skin from the contact.

She begins to wonder if she’s all entirely sane; feeling such overwhelming things merely by the caress of his hand.

They turn again. Cross over the partners next to them. For such a big man he handles the dance steps so very well. Iris can hardly take her eyes off him. She doesn’t pay any heed whether it’s remarked upon. She doesn’t give heed to whether or not their behaviour will be discussed and dissected tomorrow. She lives for this simple moment.

“For a man who does not favour it, you dance exceedingly well, Lord Ren.” She comments genially as they move down the line once more. Hands joined once again.

“I will be the worst sort of flatterer and say that my skill is entirely owed to my partner.” He smirks across at her.

They cross over once more. Weaving in and out between their partners. The herds of butterflies he awakens in her stomach were kicked sharply to life on hearing him refer to her in such a manner.

This was not an easy dance for a stranger to these shores to master; and he graces it with such affable ease. _For her. Of course it’s all for her._

They stand opposite and watch their partners weave. “That is _the_ most transparent flattery.” She smiles at him.

He’s not supposed to. But he steps closers. Very close. So close she can see the candlelight spark cornelian-red off his deep eyes. That same warming light dusting over the fine wool shoulder of his suit jacket. The diamond pin in his cravat winks like an amber eye. Sparkling finely.

“Transparent it may be. But insincere it most certainly is _not_.” He tells her softly. Gazing down at her.

She’s glancing up. Head tilted back up a little. He doesn’t fixate on how divine her décolletage and shoulder bones look in the cut of that dainty pink silk neckline. Sweetly simple. Phenomenally beautiful. He can’t help but want to let his eyes follow the silver necklace that runs down the divot her collarbone.

How terrible of him is it that he wants to see a trickle of blood drop down that neck of hers. He wants to damn convention and get her out that gown and see the supple body that drives him beyond the point of feral. He wants to just grab and touch her.

His want for her- it’s like he’s dying all over again. Driven mad by want of scooping her up in his arms and damn the consequences. It’s like he’s suffering the worst kind of fever or thirst.

She smiles at his comments of insincerity. “I believe you are incapable of being anything other than purely honest with me.”

That barbs a little at his calcified dead heart. He was being dishonest about his nature. But that was for her own good. Her safety and her well being. He swallows. His eyes grow soft.

“Then my honesty compels me to admit to something I suspect you happen to already know.” He states calmly. But there’s a tempest soaring through the both of them. It doesn’t need to be said. For they can feel it.

_And naming such a beast only grants it more potent power-_

The dance is concluding around them. They are not part of it anymore. They are stood in the middle of that ballroom. He reaches for her hand and holds it fondly. Before he brings it up and kisses it. Resumes his glancing lovingly at her.

“Lord Ren...” She gasps. He caresses her hands so fondly. She can’t withdraw her eyes from him.

“Kylo. You don’t need to use such formal terms.” He urges. _Not for this. Not for what we feel._

She bites her lip. She looks slightly agonised. Grey eyes shimmer at him. Like rain falling on slate.

“Permit me to confess that I believe my, feelings, are- very much similar.” She declares ever so gently.

But they are in vain- she is to marry another man. This realisation makes her draw back. He soothes the spike of pain that spears her happiness.

He won’t let that happen. Not to her. Not to wed a man who will slowly leech the life and happiness and freedom out of her already wearied soul. He’s determined.

The crowd of dancers around them have dissipated. They drift away. And it’s just the big dark column of him. Left towering over her. Beautiful and elegant there in her rose pink dress. Diamonds sparkling off her. The way his eyes assess her. Most matrons in the room declare it simply indecent. It’s shocking.

Iris agrees. But shocking in a most pleasant sense.

“How lucky I am that your intended decided to leave you unattended for this evening.” He smiles. Raises her hopes again. His eyes gleamed proudly with the challenge. He told her that he was not backing down.

“You’re not the only one who is glad of it.” She promises. Uncaring for the gossip that’s flourishing around them. He takes her arm and leads her, not back to her mother, rather instead over to the refreshment table.

He turns his head as he suavely leads her away. Catches her mothers frosty displeasure. He smirks so openly at it when he catches her eyes.

Her glare intensifies. He can hear her teeth crack with annoyance from over here. It thrills the smug beast in him. Taking great joy in seducing her daughter away from her miserable domineering clutches.

They approach the punch table. As they do, arm in arm, a man very far gone on drink stumbled back into her. Narrowly avoided stepping on her toes. Luckily, Kylo drew her back before the stupid idiot caused her harm. She shrinks into his side and the inebriated maggot turns his head and seems to see them for the first time.

Iris’s nose wrinkles in disgust at the letch. He reeked of French brandy. The drink in his cup slopped over his hand where he stumbled and swayed. Dripping the liquor to his boots and all over the beige pointed tiles of the floor. A messy foul drunkard.

She also recognised him. Viscount Eversleigh. The most foul rake in all of Hampshire. He liked gambling on cards, boxing matches and appreciated unsavoury female company with which to waste away his dwindling fortune.

He’s fought duels for seducing some daughters of the gentry. He’s born love childs and had affairs with matrons and widows, and seduced more than his fair share of innocents into ruin.

The most dishonourable sort of man. He made Lord Byron’s actions look like the antics of a scampering rowdy schoolboy.

Iris can’t see why; he’s not particularly handsome. A rakish mane of swirling caramel blond curls. And eyes a piercing clear blue. There is little handsomeness in his face or his chiseled square jaw flecked with blonde stubble. He had long sideburns and a passably nice smile.

Iris only saw the foulness in his manner. His crooked teeth. The way his pale eyes stared at the pretty younger girls too much.

He crooks a brow across at Iris. So much of a dense headed snob that Kylo’s towering physique didn’t sway him far from being his usual repulsive self. Especially where a nubile young woman was concerned.

“Miss Ashton. You’re looking ravishing as usual.” He simpers. Eyes barely glancing at her face. Just admiring the way he can glimpse her thighs and her rear through the thin press of her skirts.

Iris’s mouth is a thin unamused line. “Viscount Eversleigh.” She greets stiffly.

He sips the remainder of his drink, messily drops it all down his chin and his cravat as he finally comes to turn his eyes up see Kylo by her side. Always loathe to tear his eyes away from a pretty girl with a comely bosom and a plump round arse.

Miss Ashton had both those things in abundance. Displayed prettily in silk. Eversleigh brazenly stares at both her virtues. Iris feels her disgust reigning louder over her temper at being so gawped at.

She felt precious and loved a second ago. Now she feels dirty and disgusted. She wants a fat bar of soap, a hard nail brush and stinging hot water. She wants to scour away the places his eyes have lingered until her skin is raw lobster-pink. She’d scrub until she takes the skin off.

“You must be the Bavarian Lord who all the maidens are quivering over...” He mocks. Kylo’s eyes narrow. He snidely takes in the terrifying Lords height.

“Not enough fine young sheaths in which to plunder your sword into back home, ey? your lordship?” He sneers. Mocking laughter at him. Snorting with it.

Iris could’ve sworn she heard a growl rumble out of Kylo’s chest. He swallows in seething anger and the sound stops.

“Where I come from, I’ve seen ignorant men so gone on drink and stupidity, that they get torn apart by wolves by daring to walk home alone. Pity there’s no such virtue here.” Kylo sneers foully. He didn’t stand for such dishonourable behaviour towards women.

Iris fights off a smile at his language. He didn’t veil his anger when it rose. No clever tricks with his words. His bluntness is refreshing.

Eversleigh laughs. It is a loud cruel sound. “So high and mighty and yet you’re stealing a girl out from under another man. I wouldn’t be so ready to get pious if I were you.” He suggests nastily.

His drunk eyes refocus on Iris.

“Mind you. If I had a fiancé with an arse as fat as hers I should never dare leave her alone for all and asundry to flirt with. Then again, Armitage Hux is a stupid thoughtless prick.” He declares. Slipping down another mouthful of punch. Scoffing at her.

Iris’s mouth fills with bitter rage. Sour. Acetous bile staining her teeth. Her pride pricked a little sore at the stinging barbs of his words. Rose thorns that tear at her dignity and set it bleeding.

Kylo’s reminding himself that most of these people had not experienced what it’s like to watch someone get disembowelled by his own bare hands.

Were this a previous age. Kylo would take great pleasure in shoving a broad sword right through his chest. Lick the blood off the metal when he’s done.

“I wonder if the mindless Sergeant knows he’s engaged to an uppity whore, from reduced circumstances, who throws herself at any man who do much walks past?” He ponders. Leering at Iris.

Kylo’s had enough of this idiot- he clenches his jaw tight and Eversleighs shiny soled boots happen to shift back and catch on the drink he’s spilled on the tiles, he goes skidding back, careering into a footman carrying a silver tray laden with full champagne glasses.

They both go tumbling to the floor in an almighty crash. Kylo’s watching. Hoping and praying that he breaks a limb.

Shards of glass and liquor spurts across the hazy gold floor. Piles of cut glass lay in jagged shards. The entire room gasps in mortification. Servants rush to pick up the pieces.

Iris tore her hand from his and promptly disappeared into the crowds. Her silk skirts sweep the floor and he feels her fallen mood crush his chest. Kylo aches after her. He feels her sadness bloom up as tears start to spurt down her cheeks.

Lady Spencer is suddenly upon the messy scene. The gawky old woman she is, in a saffron silk gown, who is now scurrying over to see what the matter is. Kylo turns to her and states.

“I think this inebriate guest needs to take his leave of your event, Lady Spencer.” Kylo persuades in his most charming manner.

She is more than happy to agree. She has another footman peel him off the floor and escort him sharply to the door, to boot him out of it. He shouted obscenities the whole way. Slurring and hissing.

“What kind of man makes such a spectacle, I ask you.” He complains to Lady Spencer. She harrumphed in agreement. She leans close to confide in Kylo.

“Between you and I, Lord Ren. I cannot stand the foul bastard. I only invite him out of politesse to his father.” She concludes.

“Indeed.” Kylo smiles. He likes her penchant for uncommon curses.

“I shall not adhere to that politeness again for the next occasion.” She promises with stout sense. He’s glad to hear of it.

He waits until the next dance starts up and the chaos of the incident is slowly tidied away. He’s sure no one, save for the simpering London ladies, will miss him, when he slips away.

He doesn’t have to search for her for long. He knows her well enough by now to know where she’d escape too. She flees to the one place where she finds solace and peace- and that is out of doors.

He finds her huddled next to a big tall pillar out the back of the house. Just outside a terrace door. Shivering in the cold. Overlooking the wide sparse of the garden. Her dress was much too thin.

She’s folded her arms over herself. Back to him. He watches her spine wrack with cold. Stood out here in the shivering gales.

Snow plastered thick to the landscape. And specks of it now flurry down from the swirling grey clouds of the night sky up above. She’s looking out into the horizon.

He sees the jewelled comb in her hair wink from the dying light of the house. It was dark in this quarter of the grand house. Stony and silent. Where the lively party blazed and danced and proudly echoed out loud from the other room. Two halves of very different life.

He opens the door and interrupts her silence. She turns around and he sees drying tears kiss her cheeks. He hates how often she’s crying of late. Permanently in distress and it stabs sadness deep in his gut like a red hot pierce of a knife to see it.

He watches her shoulders quake. He doesn’t waste time on civility; he stands close. Puts his cold hand on her arm.

“Is that truly what people think of me?” She gasps in fear. Innocent eyes so pale. Silver and sad. Quaking tears just alike the manner of the grey clouds above. Sky silently weeping snow as she stands down here and does the same with her tears.

He shakes his head softly as his thumb ghosts away the tear on her cheek. His skin takes away the stinging salt of her sobs.

She turns into his body. Her skirts trail into the snow. Rose bleeds to heavy dark pink but she doesn’t seem to know or care. He draws her close. So close.

He gets her where he’s wanted to now for weeks. In his hold. His palms cover her upper arms. Feels the trembles run through her skin. Skimming through her veins. Can feel the zip of it racing in her warm blood.

“His words are less than nothing. He _is_ nothing.” Kylo’s promising her strongly.

“And you are worth so very much more than how his shallow cheap words made you feel.” He says angrily. Cupping the side of her neck. Cradling her sweet face to look up at him.

“To me, you are _everything_.” He declares.

“So do not even for one second, dare buy into his bullying fetid words that made you feel not worth a damn.” He adds.

Her red eyes and cheeks shimmer with tears. Skin rosy with cold. And she’s never been more beautiful to him. Looking up at him so earnestly. She sighs.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me...” She disclosed to him. He tilts his head down at her.

“Don’t cry because of him. Or any of them. It pains me to see you so dejected. You deserve only loving and good words, Iris.” He explains. And she only gets the latter.

Shifting closer. One curled knuckle of his comes up and strokes away the tear as it rolled and beaded down her cheek.

“Don’t cry. Little dove.” He soothes. Cupping her face so tenderly.

His hands were always icy cold. But the warm softness of his words made sure she barely felt the permanent cool of his skin.

She lets herself be comforted by his touch. His care. His nearness that did so many spine-shivering, desirable things to her.

She doesn’t need words. Not for this roaring passion she feels. She merely looks up to meet his gaze. He fixes on her lips. He ignores the thrumming jugular at her throat.

“Kylo-“ Is the only word she manages to rasp gently out her mouth. Her lungs empty right out. Cheeks afire. She was glancing at his lips too. And it can only end in one thing...

Still cupping one side of her face he leans forwards and sweetly puts his lips to hers. Her heart nearly thumps right out her chest when he kisses her.

She sighs into his mouth. The hand at her waist pulls her closer. Her breasts lay flat to his chest and his waistcoat buttons dig coldly into her exposed chest. The wind rips at her arms, but she doesn’t feel any of those things.

She’s wrapped up in the most passionate and mind stealing kiss that’s ever come into creation.

He mumbles a soft groan of pleasure. Muffled to her lips. He brings her closer. Closer and closer. Until both his arms can wind around her and cup at her back. She trembles and staggers back. Still not breaking away. Hungry for more.

She feels lust and love sizzle at her skin. Sipping over every nerve as if every last one of them is touching a candles naked heat. She burns. She pines. She’ll surely perish from such a brilliant kiss.

One hand still on her spine, he catches them against the pillar. One big hand slams up to the stone. Keeping her pinned there.

The kiss intensifies. She moves her lips more against his. Tenderly raises a hand to touch the front of his coat. Fine velvet and wool under her palm.

She gasps for him when his leg slips inbetween hers and brushes her mons through her thin skirts. She quivers with the unexpected bursting pleasure of it.

Something deep inside her had come apart - fallen to bits like unravelling thread. Some private pocket of yearning he has tugged open. Maybe it was there all along? Maybe she only feels it now because this very man is here to let it free.

She’s sweet and tart and cool against his mouth. She tastes just as good as his fevered erotic dreams had dared to allude. She tastes like cold snow, and sharp champagne. He drinks in the warmth from her lips like he’s trying to leech it away.

They break away for the barest second and it’s agony. She unfurls so many things in him. She makes him weak and soft - and made other more noticeable parts of himself significantly harder.

She called on so many of his senses he cannot put order to them if he tried. His dove strangled every scrap of rationality he had left.

There was only her- her lips. Her thighs. Her mons against his leg. Her soft soft body under that insultingly thin encasing of peony silk. The rose scent of her hair. The lavender soap on her skin. It makes him dizzy, hungry, fevered and mad all in one.

He growls when they part. Rests his forehead against hers. Sighs almost irritated when he feels the trembling of her thighs, where her cleft grazes friction on his leg. It was a barely innocent touch. But just enough to get him snarling with need.

“Oh God-“ she sighs. Sense swimming back down into her head.

That kiss made her brain shoot upward to the snowy studded heavens. He smiles. Unable to resist. Presses another sweet kiss to her lips. The soft smack of it rings in the air. All sound blotted out and muffled by the snow.

They lazily kiss again for a few long languid minutes. Time moves thick and slow like syrup. The world doesn’t exist beyond them. Not society. Not her mother nor her worries and fears. None of it matters. He pulls back. Alluding to her gasp for god from earlier...

“Now, do forgive my blasphemy. But that’s much better than any god I know.” He insists sincerely and sinfully.

She blushes.

His hot breath is now huffing against her mouth. Eyes blown wide. Cheeks pink. She was much in the same flustered state. Dizzy from it. Whole body studded with desire.

“I should be getting back...” She sighs glumly. The thought of tearing away rips a bleeding hole in her heart. Her agony comes all over again.

He strokes her cheek with his thumb. “I will be thinking of this moment all night. Little dove.” He confesses. Capturing all of her and comforting her flushed state to memory. So he might recall it later- in a late lonely hour, when all is dark and dead silent.

“Me too.” She whispers. Her smile creases her pink cheeks.

“Go inside and get warmed. I will not have you freeze. I will wait and then I shall follow.” He tells. Smoothing a hand to the cold skin of her shoulder. His entire hand can cup all the round of her shoulder joint under one palm.

“I don’t feel in the least cold.” She smiles. Shivering. Goosebumps on her. And it’s not from the chill of their surroundings.

He can feel her lust. It’s in the hair standing frigid straight on her neck. Her nipples knotted up hard to stiff resentful resolute peaks. How divine would it feel to have those tender buds harden against his palms-

He kisses her once more. Snatching in a taste. Before stepping back. Cupping her face. “Go...” He smiles lovingly. He doesn’t even want to comprehend what would happen if they are discovered.

She squeezes his hand right before she slips away. Rips her body away and it hurts to do so. It absolutely kills her. But she manages to stand tall.

Their kiss tucked in her heart like the sensual little secret it absolutely is.

She scurries back to her mothers side. Claimed she retired as she had champagne splashed on her skirts. Mother tutts. For once not at her.

She returns to her post by her side in the matrons corner as the dutiful daughter. Hoping her lips aren’t too kiss bruised and cherry red.

Still no sign of her intended redhead her tonight. She watches the less fashionable fast of the Barley Mow. As men and ladies dance and leap around the floor. The folk song very fast in it’s pace.

Iris’s body chills and burns when he re-enters the room. She’s scorched to blisters and dunked in an ice bath all at once when he strides proudly back in.

He keeps his distance. The tall black handsome column of a man that she never loses sight of across the ballroom.

Whenever she dares a look at him, he smirks lightly in her direction. Eyes dark with lust. And a look crafted solely for her alone.

Everyone keeps asking her what she’s smiling about. She can give them no answer. And she doesn’t.

It was entirely her sinful little secret. Her discretional sin. And may lightning strike her dead for wishing it, but, she can’t wait to sin again.

She wasn’t the only one. Except Kylo is a man far more accustomed to things such as sins.

He repeats that kiss over and over in his head all night. Tries to recapture the memory of her taste, the feel of her lips, her body under his. So frail and yet she drew such strong passions out of him, it left his knees buckling.

For the entire remainder of the ball he gazes at her from across the room. Looking. And not touching and it’s driving him to the brink of madness.

She stands there all demure, under the watchful sharp eyes of her harpy of a mother. And he admires her freely as he talks to acquaintances. Or merely stands on his own. Watching The London set put their backs out, dancing like a preening bevy of swathed swans trying to attract his attention.

It doesn’t work. For Iris has every ounce of it. When she looks for him, he smiles. Wanting to cut right across that room and kiss her again in front of everyone. There is torture in being withheld from the things he desires. He’s learning that now, more than ever.

The ball eventually draws to a close. The crowds thin out of the golden room as the great and the good take to their carriages and return home.

He watches the Ashton entourage leave across the room. His eyes cling to her and she demurely turns over her shoulder. He can almost hear her calling a goodnight to him. How she wants nothing more than to walk over and say it in person. To have him kiss her hand again and smile at her from up close.

She follows after her silly sisters. Who skip and bounce out with enthusiasm telling her something. Some tidbit of gossip perhaps. He watches her until she is out of sight.

He takes his leave not long after. Summons his carriage and clambers in. He barely registers the drive home.

Before too long Hellford Park looms out of the snow. A blanketed grey beast. He alights the carriage, pats Erland on the neck and is given a huffing nicker of a goodnight snort in return.

He strides up the steps. By the time he’s on the porch, heavy specs of snow are dotted in his hair and speckled on his dark coat shoulders.

Jomar is there. Opening the door for his master before his hand even touches the handle. He was always attentive. Always at the door to greet him. It’s spooky how efficient he is.

“It’s as if you can sense my drawing near.” Kylo’s remarks to him snidely with mirth as he hands him over his leather gloves. Jomar takes them. Nonplussed by his masters wit.

“I like to think so after all my years of serving you. But truth be told, your treads and singularly heavy. You stomp about like a petulant child.” He comments dryly. Kylo unbuttons his coat and hands it across to him.

Jomar always did have a wicked sense of humour. It ran in the family, it seemed. As long as Kylo has been a member of the gentry and reigning on this earth in all his blood thirsting glory - for these last 500 years atleast - A Jomar man has always been his butler.

Generations of them, dating right back to the 13th century. Kylo has known his great grandfather, his grandfather and father alike. They all served him well. Through peacetime and through wars. There’s no other or greater butler, or greater friend, he’d rather have.

Jomar takes no lordly sardonic nonsense off Kylo, and has a knife-like wit that stayed sharpened. He knows what Kylo is. His whole family did. Kylo fiercely protects and cherished his own. Respect cut both ways.

“I see no blood on your coat or hands. I therefore conclude you had a terribly unpleasant evening.” Jomar comments as he moved across the echoing marble of the foyer to hang up his coat in the convenient nearly empty cloakroom close by.

“It was actually rather bearable...” Kylo smiles enigmatically to himself.

Jomar doesn’t reign in his shock. Matter of fact; he swears in his native punjabi tongue.

His dark eyebrows almost disappear under his indigo blue dastar as he turns back to Kylo. “If you’ll excuse me. I think I need to go and lie down from the shock.” He remarks dryly.

Kylo gives him one of his piercing dark looks.

“Why do I bother keeping you around again?” A rhetorical statement but Jomar answers it anyway.

His station comfortable enough to allow him to do so. He’s the only one who speaks frankly to Kylo. The only true semblance of a friend this lonely vampire could boast of.

“Because me and my ancestors have served your ghastly tempers since the dark ages.” He observes.

Kylo grumbles a grumpy growl across from him as he starts up the grand mahogany imperial stairs. Making for bed.

“And if it weren’t for me, you’d be a mad feral recluse with musty untidy clothes and unpolished boots and hair as long as weeping willow vines.” Jomar insists.

Kylo rolls his eyes. “I heard that.” Jomar comments.

His back to Kylo as he brushes snow off the overcoat. He always was good at making Kylo feel and sound like a stroppy infant.

He’s known him through terrible times and he’s put up with far worse from the man. Starvation. His feral temper. His mood swings and anger. The bloodlust that nearly drove him dangerously insane. He stayed faithfully by his side for all of it. Their bond always came out stronger. As bonds so tend to do when they are tested.

“And how fares the beautiful Miss Ashton?” He seeks. He idly calls over his shoulder at his master.

Kylo stops on the stairs and smiles. “She is well.” He’s delighted to tell.

Jomar turns and catches the flicker of his strong smile. “Is that a smile I’m seeing? You must excuse me if I immediately go and summon the nearest painter or sculptor. For I haven’t seen you smile since 1789.” Jomar ribs.

Kylo’s smiling more at him now. “Go to bed you old fool.” He leers.

Jomar smiles too. His goatee moustache tips upwards with the force of his smile. His bitter-cocoa eyes warmly glimmer. That smile and his teasing means he’s in a jovial mood. And Jomar knows the very pretty young woman who called here some days ago, might well be the key to all that joviality.

He is most singular. No other man would smile at him for his calling them a fool.

“What time will you assault my ears with your incredible noise in the morning?” Jomar seeks. Asking when Kylo will rouse himself and possibly might ring for breakfast. He doesn’t sleep much. Fitful if anything.

“Not too early.” He answers.

“Very good, your Lordship.” Jomar bows. “Off with you. You look as if you need your beauty sleep.” He insulted as he moves off. Hands folded behind his back to the servants quarters. The timpani clacks of his boots ring quieter and quieter off in the hall.

Kylo starts up the steps again. Thuds of his stomps echo through the foyer. “Oh yes. And hire me a new butler tomorrow, would you?” He jokingly calls after the man.

He can feel Jomar smile. And he hears his cutting response. “About time too. I can finally go and serve someone respectably decent.” Is his answer.

Kylo smiles as he slips up the dark staircase to his master suite bedchamber.

He opens the door to his room. Fire lit, red velvet quilts pulled back on the bed. Thick thick blood canopy’s drawn on the four posters. The cream of the sheets, like pale skin, barely peeping through. The fire blazes at the end of his bed and warms the room beautifully. Melting tones of amber and red. Like bittersweet snap of autumn.

He starts peeling off his clothes at the door. Shuts it with pressing his back to the wood. Hears the click of the latch. And when he knows he’s alone again, his lusts resume in their rampages and impulses to run wild.

He’s been half hard ever since that kiss.

_Oh heavens above, that kiss._

Her sweet sugar lips and her skin and blood and her body driving him to insane distraction.

He rips off his cravat after the knot is loosened. The pin clatters to the floor. But right now he doesn’t care if he crushes it underfoot. He angrily shrugs off his velvet jacket, tears open his waistcoat and gladly lets the buttons fly and scatter. Pinging to the floor like pearled hailing rain.

He leaves his clothes strewn all over the floor. He doesn’t bother getting his boots off. It’ll take too long. He untucks his shirt and the neckline rests low between his pecs. Almost exposing his nipples. But he doesn’t care about that now. He doesn’t care about decency or politeness. He doesn’t have too here.

He can give in to his basest urges. He will. And he does.

He palms over his erection trapped stiff in his breeches. Throws his head back to the door and bites out a moan. Solid skull thunking against the door. He grits his teeth and rubs harder. Groans growing in volume as he strokes himself.

He quickly crosses the room and takes up a seat in the red armchair by the fire. One side warmed from the heat. As he goes he fiddled impatiently with his trouser falls. By the time he sits down - a mere two seconds later - his patience is lost. He tears open his breeches and hears the fabric ripping. Right down to his strong thighs.

He growls out loud when he fists a hand around himself. Syrupy slick of sticky precome coats his palm. He’s been leaking and dripping all over himself for hours. He remembers rubbing into her. Her sweet cunt and mons grinding against his thigh-

His free hand grips the arm of the chair so hard he hears the wood crackle. Breaking the frame underneath. Crumbling it to pieces. He wraps a hand around himself. Harder than steel. He strokes upwards and as his palm catches friction over the sensitive head still leaking cum, he writhes in his chair. Choking moans. Choking on her name. She’s crushing him.

He sighs, panting, bites his lip. Tips his head back. His hips pump and thrust into the warm heaven of his slicked up fist. He looks down and watches his flushed cockhead and rosy length catch on the stimulating ridges of his gripped fingers. Watching silvery wet string off himself too. And plenty there was of it.

He tips his head back into the chair. Hits the soft upholstery. Whining and whimpering for her. “ _Oh_ dove. Oh fuck-“ he curses.

Imagining she was here next to him. On her knees on the floor. Learning how he likes to be pleasured. He’d give this entire world to see her sat there. Gripping and pumping his cock with her innocent little hand.

Better still if she leaned forwards, gave him a tempting glance of those breasts he _so_ badly wants to suckle at - and slipped his erection into her hot, waiting mouth. Bobbing her head on him. Tasting the salty hot weight of him on her tongue.

The thought of his cock being taken in those rose sweet lips he’d tasted, makes him yell out loud. Thank god there were no servants rooms up here. He’d wake the whole house if he wasn’t careful. The whole goddamned county.

Hand moving faster now with that image. Twisting harder. Right to the base. Feeling the wet cum slip between his thighs. Dropping over his sac, staining the chair seat below.

He braces his heels on the floor and really starts to fuck his hips upwards onto his grip. Free hand leaps for his right nipple and thumbs it slowly.

He’s shivering with pleasure before long. Big strong trunks of his thighs tremble with pleasure. He hasn’t had the drive to satisfy himself for months. Even longer since he laid with a partner. Years even since he’s had a body lain beneath him, writhing in pleasure.

Now his need rather runneth over- Thoughts of his dove fills his head. Her taste, her scent.

He’s getting close. Edging nearer and nearer. Noises getting louder and he bites his lip. But his fangs are sharp now and his own blood fills his mouth. Cherry copper bitter and iron sweet.

He grunts and fucks his fist and just absolutely drools blood and spit onto his own chest thinking of them joining together. Thinks how wet and warm she’d be.

He imagines her riding him in this chair he’s sat in right this very second. Her perfect breasts bouncing in his face. Nipples hard. Sweaty skin. Bouncing her gorgeous wet cunt up and down on his cock as he holds her hips and grinds up deep. Legs bent to stuff her in his lap and get his large cock buried to the hilt inside her.

He can see her on top of him. Naked. Breasts and her throat hammering blood in his face. He thinks of her orgasming loudly in his lap as he cums. Imagines the spend of himself spurting everywhere over his shirt, is her gushing all over his chest til he’s slippery with it.

He jerks and rubs until every last shred of pleasure and every last sticky drop of his seed is spent.

He sags back into the chair. Blood and drool dripping from his cut mouth. His chest heaves and when he opens his eyes, they are dazzling gold. Turned amber by the fire.

“Sweet dove. What you do to me...” He sighs.

One kiss and he’s sat there covered slick in blood and cum and spit. She’s making quite the feral creature of his lust. He drops his head back into the chair. Spent.

Maybe he’ll have a bath drawn in a little while. For now, he looks into the hearth and feels the pleasure seep lazy sleep down into his bones.

Across at Westwell. Iris is sat at her vanity in her nightgown. Brushing her hair for bed. When a sudden wooziness and haze of pleasure bursts between her legs. She feels sticky and sodden between her thighs and her spine wracks with desire.

She smiles. Blushing as she continues on brushing her tresses.

She still blames it all on that kiss.

~


	11. Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friday 13th 👀👀 A very fitting date for all this spookiness ❣️
> 
> Under the Shadows by Rae Morris. Give that one a whirl if you fancy...

Another week in the life of a soon-to-be-wedded young woman perched delicately upon the dizzying precipices of matrimonial bliss; for she had to suffer yet another outing with her intended huffy Sergeant.

They were bid to the local theatre three towns over, this eve, to take a the comedic operatic of a show. A paltry pastime perhaps, Hux was not keen, where Iris entered the evening determined to have some share of joy in it.

She’d often found a healthier outlook far more substantially bearable, than that of a venomous one. A better application of her energy as far as she’s concerned; her determination to enjoy such things outweighs the scope of misery she could place upon her evening.

She’d be sat down upon a comfy seat. In the dark. Not conversing. That sounds like some sheer brazen luck to her; she won’t have to interact with Hux or his overbearing unctuous mother. But then her mind callously interjects that she’d have to spend the rest of her life married to the man. So one night’s reprieve was almost sadly tragic. A happenstance to be mourned.

Pitied. If she had anyone who could so pity her in that manner.

They could certainly pity her now. Sat in a dark coach. Travelling and clunking along to the theatre house.

Hux sit’s opposite inspecting the quality of the shine of his boots. Besmirching his valet’s hand no doubt.

She sits opposite. All wrapped up in her velvet cloak and another silk dress he didn’t compliment her on looking so becoming in.

A better man might’ve atleast called her pretty. Might’ve atleast made her feel just the tiniest bit flattered that he has her on his arm. No such luck with the loveless Armitage Hux.

Moody silence sits with them. Almost as if a completely intrusive third passenger. Heralding the frosty silence that’s colder than the light of the icy moon outside tonight. Catching on all the snow. Shining over brown-frosted hills and dead winter trees.

They come to the gaiety of the theatre. Even as the coach pulls up, Iris can see numerous men and women flocking there. Driven in by the chill and the desire for the show. The name of which is emblazoned above the door. And in peeling posters all along the torch lit front of the stony theatre building.

A creamy edifice of domineering cotswold stone. The sleeting snow, like mush and rain and ice, patters and melts into the roof and seeps soggy into the dirty pavements. Spitting gloopy down from the heavens.

The weather is a foul as Hux’s somber mood. He barely looks at her just as he barely offers her a hand down from his coach. She had wounded his ego most sorely the other night. With the carriage and the wolf debacle.

Iris has never known such frailty or scorned derision greater than that of a man’s bruised ego. Softer than eggshell.

She would be more incensed at his sullen mood. If she wasn’t already suffering in other ways. A persistent headache had taken up residence in her temples. It pinched and hurt and her tolerance for annoyance had furiously lessened.

They cross the steps up the foyer, and cut through the bustling crowds to come to the gathering of their family who await them. Their carriage preceded their own by mere minutes. Maratella rewards herself being so sly and forward thinking in sending Hux to fetch Iris in their second coach whilst the rest of her family rode on with her and Brendol.

She fancied she was giving the budding lovebirds a moment alone; probably imagines they’d steal a kiss or gabble excitedly about their wedding plans. Hopes for the loving future ahead. She wasn’t to know they were barely on speaking terms.

Hux catches her elbow before they reach their assorted relatives. Brings her to a stop.

“Might we endeavour to appear civil, tonight Iris?” Hux speaks lowly into her ear. Stooping over her. Looking as if they are exchanging some lovers secret from a trysting moment.

“I should like to set an example of gentility for yours and my families interests. For we both know what is at stake if we are, after all.... destined to be wed.” He tells with a note of dullness to his voice.

_Be still my swooning heart,_ Iris remarks to herself dryly.

“There is no quarrel between us, Sergeant. And if there is, I assure you, it is certainly not being offered from my quarter.” Iris insists. A veiled comment meant to remind and remark how annoyingly taciturn he was behaving.

Without mistaking her utter joy at correcting a gentleman’s behaviour and the out-coming matter of it being inherently satisfying; she’s more vexed at how he can seem so displeased with her conduct.

He does have the gall to look the tiniest bit ashamed to that confession. He offers her a flicker of a curtly guilty smile. Nodding. “Very well.” He adds.

Iris looks down and gently takes his offered arm. He stands straight. Peacocking, puffing his chest out in his scarlet uniform. They stride across for their families with perfectly false smiles pasted on their faces. An air of geniality seeping out of every pore.

Posy and Flora are the first to not so subtly comment at their sister and the titian haired Sergeant being left alone together for an entire carriage ride. _Again_.

Her mother leans to Maratella and smiles something unto her friends ear. If her relatives get any the more transparent, Iris strongly suspects she’s going to scream and start tearing out her hair.

Iris nods a hello to the Huxs’. Brendol is in attendance tonight. A man of late age, little hair. Thinning russet red that hints at his sons colouring. He is portly and acts and speaks as if he disapproves greatly of everything in his path.

The man is merely eyeing her with the same bored indifference as his son. Mutters something to his wife about getting to their seats before too long. Looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else. Bedecked in his army uniform too. The heritage of proud soldiers, the noble and gallant Hux ancestors. Men with soldiery and lust for war and medals and honour in their blood, dating as far back as the Normandy landings, most likely.

She felt something then she never fathomed she’d feel for Armitage- she pitied him.

Growing up with a father who domineered and controlled his interests as much as her mother had controlled hers. She was raised and bred for marriage? Hux was raised and bred for the glory of war. No matter if he wanted it or not. Anything to continue the proud heritage. She suspects they are perhaps more alike in that regard than she first thought.

She however, cannot pretend it makes her love him any the more. Respect him slightly, possibly. But her heart and feelings are still sworn away to another man.

“I’m very much anticipating the performance. Maratella you are very generous to invite us all to take use of your box. Such a fine view.” Iris insists to Mrs Hux. She had even said that it would not be so prudent for Iris to start calling her ‘her second Mama’ if she so wished. For they are almost connected as family already.

“Indeed. Miss Ashton you are most welcome. My dear friend and I jointly share the box for the season. I think mayhap you know of her? Lady Spencer...” She preaches jovially. Loudly enough for everyone around them to hear. Whether by design or accident- Iris cannot say.

Iris nods. “Indeed ma’am. We were at her ball at Cavisham House, just last eve.”

Maratella’s face falls with comedic over-exaggeration. “ _Oh_ we did most want to attend. Alas so many parties and assemblies we are promised to at present!” She gushed.

“Armitage and I got caught up at the Countess of Whetherby’s assembly last evening. Hux took dances with many fine young ladies. But I dare say he missed you something most acutely awful my dear.” She winked at Iris. Reaching over and patting her hand in mock comfort.

Her levity didn’t lessen the barb of insult that struck through her heart. She’d waited on Hux being in attendance all evening, and he thought so little of her, he took dances with other women.

Now atleast she knew where she stood. No matter Maratella’s telling her otherwise. That pity she spoke of before, quickly dried up. The well of her good thoughts for Hux quickly dried up. As it usually does mere seconds after prevailing herself of his company.

She rather wants to drop the arm of his she’s now holding in fake mannerly affection. Only she doesn’t get the chance too. Maratella is already rabbiting on and boasting about something else.

“Alas, I had word from my poor friend Lady Spencer just this eve. She sent me a missive. I chanced on its arrival just as we made ready to leave. She so hates to decline an invite to the theatre. But she is struck down with pains of the chest. A nervous compliant I fear.” She admits sadly.

“She did say she sent a certain gentleman to take her place. I believe you are of his acquaintance, Mrs Ashton. He claims one with you...”

Mrs Ashton frowns most keenly. “Pray. Who might that be?” She comments.

“That would be me, I believe.” Interjects a new deep voice into their conversation.

Iris’ skin crawls. And not in any sort of horrible way. But the very best way. That smoke and whiskey-molasses voice that sets her bones quivering is like manna to her ears.

So sudden his appearance that all the blood in the upper half of her body rushes suddenly to her face. Heating her cheeks. And she’s never been more aware of her spine being a column of thrashing fizzing and excited nerves.

Their party turns around and sure enough, there is Lord Ren. Stepping out of the shadows of the nearest hallway. He looked oddly at home amongst the scarlet blood walls, the shadows, and the cloaking velvet curtains of the nearest entryway. Hands behind his back. His impassive figure cuts a handsome image.

Black coat and breeches and boots as always. An ivory silk waistcoat the colour of old bones sits on his top half. A searing white cravat knotted at his neck. Collar tipping under his chin. A monochrome monstrosity. So monstrous because he’s so beautiful Iris can liken no other sight in the world like him. He was truly a wondrous beast.

He appears so opportunely. As if summoned by the devil. Sculpted out of thin air. In a great rushing shift of air he brings with him the cologne that’s almost as tantalising as his very handsome looks. Sandalwood, rich dirty earth and something cold and opulent, fragranced, like frost crusted on mint leaf.

Iris takes great pleasure in knowing his mere presence grits her mothers teeth to dust. She’s biting back her tongue. So as not to be uncivil in front of Maratella. Showing up her host was the height of rudeness.

“Lord Ren.” Maratella gasps excitedly. Preening and fussing with her appearance. Kylo looks over at Iris warmly. Sets her soul on fire with those honeyed black eyes before he smoothly rolls his look across to Mrs Hux. His second host for the evening.

His vampiric charms and hypnotic influences seep out of his every pore. The aids to the ultimate predator. He can enchant anyone. Even the vapid likes of Mrs Hux.

She’s reacting to him - blushing and fluffing her hair curls. Even in her late age. Humans are always so susceptible to him. He never has a problem attracting interest. He’s tall, dark and far too beguiling. The weak mortals - of either gender - throw themselves at his feet and fawn into madness that he might dare look at them.

His eyes are however, set upon one prize. And at that very moment; Kylo’s ultimate prize has her hand hooked on another insipid man’s elbow. _That won’t do._

He eyes the contact with fleeting derision as Mrs Hux flatters and compliments him every manner. As if her tongue simply drips honey and sugar.

“... Indeed. We are all so honoured you will be making up our merry party this eve. Lord Ren.” She wheedles.

Kylo tips his smirk across at Caroline Ashton. Who looks ready to spit venom at him past her forked tongue. She was reddening with rage. Clutching her hands together like she wanted to break bone.

“I am excessively happy to make up the party.” He smiles. Hoping it would be a dagger in Mrs Ashton’s scaled skin.

“Lady Spencer simply begged the acquaintance on me. I couldn’t possibly in all good grace refuse it.” He shows off.

He sees Caroline flinch and watches the veins strain at her temples. He will torture her for every second. Tenfold. For what she’s putting her daughter through. Making her suffer the attentions of a arduous prick, who thinks himself the finest soldier England has ever produced.

That makes Kylo scoff. He known soldiers like Hux: men who flock to the uniform, quick to put it on. Not so quick to honour its pride and meaning.

Men like him; fighting men like him are one’s born out of centuries and generations upon generations of soldiers forced unto the army life by their domineering and stuffy fathers. Kylo casts an eye over Mr. Hux who boredly inspects his pocket watch. Doesn’t so much as even turn his head toward Kylo.

He’s seen a hundred men like this. And they flee from battle. Unable to take the horror of being cannon fodder. They think themselves above it. Better. Superior. They don and peacock their red coats but when it comes down to committing the savagery of fighting in battle, they run.

Kylo’s slit the throats of a thousand deserters in his day. He’s sure when the next war comes - and it will - he will be called upon to do more of the same.

He’d take ten peasants with the will of iron and guts to defend their homeland with their bare bleeding hands, warring to the bone, over a thousand preening dandy officers like Hux. Ones who picked the lint and specs of dirt off their uniforms. Bragged about their commissions and then would doubtlessly abandon good men to die when battle finally came.

“How long have you known Lady Spencer sir?” Mrs Hux asks.

“Not at all until I met her at the ball last Eve. Mrs Hux. She was most grateful for my ousting an awful drunkard who was causing insult to her guests.” Kylo explains.

Mrs Hux looks amazed. Iris blushes. Posy and Flora look all flirty up at the tall Lord. Mrs Hux looks ready to swoon.

Armitage appears bored and annoyed. “How very gallant of you Lord Ren. Did he offer you insult perhaps, snub your grand title? Laugh at your boots?” Hux sniffs with derision.

Kylo locks eyes with the redheaded cur who dared to offer him, the landed peer, an insult. The ember warmth leeches from Kylos eyes and his smile drops. His stare hardened to black frost. His eyes glitter darkly in the lowlight. Like shiny, scuttling black beetles wings.

“Actually, Sergeant, he offered foul mouthed insult to your beautiful fiancée. You would know of this, had you not left her unattended all evening.”

Hux sneers and his lips twitch to snarl an ugly response. Kylo looks nonplussed. Though behind his back, his knuckles crack white where he curls his fist. And he feels the veins in his arms and his biceps strain, itch and tense not to retaliate.

Sensing the men bristling over Miss Ashton. Maratella suggests they all take to their seats for the performance begins soon. The Ashton’s walk off with Brendol and she takes the time to turn around and hiss at her son. Her sugared smile disappears and coldness takes its place.

“Armitage. Remember your manners. Don’t be so uncouth in front of Iris. And especially not to Lord Ren.” She shrilled at her son, before she takes her leave.

Hux cups over the back of Iris’ hand where it rests on his elbow. Kylo stays stood opposite. Glaring at the man. Seeing his hand on hers made his blood itch for terrible violent things. He aches to reach across and twist Hux’s stupid neck til it crunches into pieces.

_What’s worse... is that Hux doesn’t love her._

He will never love her. He is using her for show and want of connection and that is all. Instead of appreciating the beauty on his arm... he’s using her to manipulate the emotions of another man he detests.

Kylo so very much wants to dismember the sad prick. The animal in him claws at its confinement’s. Slobbering maw baying at the gates of his temper. He swallows and keeps it tamed - _for now._

“Hux. Please. I beg you. There is no cause for incivility here.” Iris insists.

Sensing the bristling and enflaming of masculine tempers flaring up around her. Kylo looks calm. Hux looks snotty and more and more like a spoilt brat not getting his own way. The poncy Sergeant barely turns his head to her when she speaks.

He’s fraying on the last ragged rope holding Kylo’s inner beast in check. In his time he was raised to hold women in high regard. They were warriors. Mothers. Strong farmers, and skilled craftspeople. People worthy of alignment with men. In this rabid society? They are merely goals and dowries to be won. It sickens him.

Hux looks like he wants to stomp his foot and stroppily exclaim that Lord Ren started it. He eyes as the crowds about them thin away. Off to their seats. He snatches his arm off her. Steps forward.

“Do not dare think to correct me, woman.” Hux says lowly at her. Before he turns his head to Kylo. Still addressing her. But his eyes stabbing into Kylo.

“Lord Ren should be apprised of speaking so discourteously towards me.” He warns. Thank goodness he wasn’t isn’t full ceremonial dress and had his sword strapped to his side. He might have run Kylo through.

Lord Ren raises one sardonic brow. Really, there was an advantage to his lofty peerage ranking as a Lord. It meant he was always in a position to arch a sardonic brow. His smirk tips up on one side too.

“You offer me threat? Sergeant?” Kylo asks. He’s twice the man’s width. And three heads taller.

There’s no question who the real power is. Kylo’s itching to show how much. Slam the pathetic boy up against the nearest wall. Feet off the ground. He could choke him there with one hand. It would be no more to him than swatting away a stray flea.

“I do, Sir. Maybe your foreign ways make you unaware of the standards here in our polite society. But understand me; it is in very poor taste to try a poach a man’s intended from him.” He snarls. Voice reedy thin.

“In my foreign experience...” Kylo digs at his poor choice of words. “I seldom recommend that senseless men such as yourself leave their beautiful ladies unattended. Who knows what may come to pass...” Kylo suggests.

He wouldn’t allude to their kiss last eve and bring her mortification and embarrassment. Hux recoils to spit some more venom but Kylo steps up.

“Perhaps if you bore an ounce of gallantry and backbone you’d be better placed to deserve a woman like Miss Ashton. A curious intelligent woman, whom you can overlook and subjugate at every turn. She deserves a far better spouse than some coward in a uniform.”

“I would call you outside if I believed you had any honour with which to meet me.” Hux seethes.

He was challenging Kylo to an illegal duel. Not over Iris’ honour. But rather his own. How typical. Lord Ren’s amused face quickly turns into the most terrifying expression she’s ever seen. Such fury steeling his handsome features.

“Don’t dare talk down to me, of honour.” Kylo cautions. Iris’ mouth gapes. Such wounded fury in his eyes.

“You believe that because you don a pretty red coat that you are the most valiant warrior to ever set foot on this earth? I’ve seen such carnage and bloody fighting that it would make you shudder in horror and scream out in your dreams. I’ve fought in more wars than you can ever name, _boy_.” He spits in gross insult.

“I gladly lack many things your fetid society seems to value. But don’t you dare accuse _me_ , of lacking honour.” Kylo seethes.

“I will not waste my time listening to more of this effrontery.” Hux straightens his back. Pretends not to be undignified and stalks off towards the box after his family.

Iris sighs in his wake. It appears he’d forgotten to escort her. She wasn’t entirely sure that was a bad thing. She didn’t wish to spend time with such a spoilt brat of a man, who can’t look behind his own ignorant scope.

“I detest many things. But a man such as he who so readily and openly snipes to others and thinks himself loftily superior, is not something I can pretend to stomach.” Iris offers to Kylo. Chewing lightly on her lower lip in trepidation.

He walks quick across to her and gently plucks her hand up to kiss it. Putting it on his arm thereafter. If her own idiot of a fiancé won’t escort her, he sure as hell will. Damn the cur for making less of her.

“I’m so sorry for his conduct Lord Ren. And any insult you offered you. ” She offers. Even though he’s trembling with anger and rage, entwined with disgust for that man. He doesn’t let her see how close he came to loosing his temper. A hairs breadth.

He’s sure to look stern. But his eyes are warm. “Your apology is not needed. Iris. He formed and spat those words. You did not.” He tells her seriously. He lets the bitter bile of rage slip off his tongue. She calms him.

Her beauty soothes the beast.

She looks ashamed. Ashamed of being connected to such a low example of man. “A woman is supposed to support her intended in every manner...” She says with perturbation.

“Well. He makes that venture impossible.” Kylo admits lowly. She smiles a little. Agreeing. Though she dare not speak such terms aloud.

“If I might add, You look very handsome tonight. Miss Ashton.” He flatters. Where her cloak was taken some time ago by the porter, the exquisite nature of her dress came into view.

A soft teal blue silk. Simple cut. He’s seen it on her before. The one with the low back and the sweeping train. He admired it on her before, and he will do so again. She shouldn’t be made to feel plain or boring in her dresses when she really did look truly beautiful in each one.

Tonight there is a thin necklace with some pretty sparkles and paste gems of some blue stones set around her neck. He watches the broach of it raise and sink with her breathing. His eyes run unhindered along her collarbone. Watches the jitter of her pearl drop earrings.

They walk up the narrow little carpeted stairs, and come along the hallway. Selecting their door they join the others in Lady Spencer and Mrs Hux’ box. The theatre was not exactly a grand one. Though the building was magnificent in its Georgian architecture it was a small country place of not much elegance. Candles flickered low, and the gloomy edifice is only made bright by the stage lights blinking upwards towards the painted scenery and the backdrop of draped red curtains.

The rest is lost to darkness. Ladies and gentlemen mill about in their seats, shifting in the rows of seats below. The upper circle opposite is populated too. As busy as the rest of the place.

The show is shortly to begin. Kylo doesn’t have time to admire the look on Caroline’s face seeing him deliver Iris to her seat. Glaring at Hux sharply, who gave him his own acerbic look right back. They watch the big impressive Lord stride down the box toward his seat.

Hux leans into her. “I make no such apology for my exit. I cannot stand a man who thinks so meanly of brave soldiers, such as I.”

Iris sighs to herself. Of course he overlooked the fact that he was the one who started the tirade of insults in the first place. He turned Kylo’s chiding the Sergeant onto a martyrdom for all English soldiers.

“I understand.” She says dully. Her head is throbbing. Temples hurt.

If she says anything else she’d get too incensed with him. He didn’t even defend his poor actions. Kylo was directly correct about Hux; he really did have no backbone or honour where she was concerned.

The curtains pull apart. The play begins. Lord Ren settles in his seat. Down the far far end of the box by Maratella and Brendol. Iris finds it not at all ironic or unsurprising that there’s a box length of people between them. Doubtless that was her mothers doing.

Kylo knows it too - he catches her eye where their seats are set back. A wry grin tugs at his lips. Despite herself, Iris blushes at it. She looks down into her lap. Hux turns to the side and catches her blush. Sees how Lord Ren turns away. Smug and smiling. It piqued his interest.

Iris tries to concentrate. But it appears the niggling headache she began to suffer earlier was pounding incessantly at her temples. She’s reminded of it every time there’s sharp clapping or the pitching whine of a violin chorus. The room suddenly feels much too much. Too hot. Too stifling.

Her dress feels too sticky - clinging to her back and her chest. She forgot her fan and she wished she would have remembered it. So she wouldn’t now be gasping for air.

Another thundering round of applause sharply rippled through the theatre. She shuts her eyes and winces at it. How it stings so at her head.

Hux continues clapping beside her. Elbows jostling her. Kylo frowns at the idiot not even sensing she was unwell. He doesn’t applaud. He looks her way with a frown of interest. Brow creased with concern.

It wasn’t long til the intermission now. Barely a half of an hour. Kylo watches her face crumpled in pain. She stands and says something idle and quick to Hux. He nods and she slips away. Out the darkened door. Into the shadows of the dimmed theatre.

Kylo turns his head back. Tries valiantly to concentrate on the insipid comedy play. But he finds he can’t. Especially not as a moment opposite catches his eye. Draws his eyeline to the opposite box. Where a dark coated man with golden hair slips out the door. Smirking directly at Kylo. Piercing eyes stabbed into Kylo’s nonexistent soul. He knows that smirking face.

Viscount Eversleigh. The most foul letch on two legs. The drunkard he had thrown out of the Spencer’s ball last night.

He couldn’t leap up and go after Iris. It would look planned. He had to leave it as long as possible. He tried to think that the perfidious and indocile Eversleigh had gone to fetch a drink. Yet he seemed like the kind of man to order someone to do it for him.

Kylo’s worries and paranoia seeps heavy through his blood like rotten sticky tar. He hates this sickening feeling. He prayed that Eversleigh’s exit wasn’t fuelled by Iris’. He really did.

He has no such blind faith left in mortal men. He may be the darkest foulest creature, but it’s nothing to some men’s filthy aspirations. Some were truly vile. Especially those men gone on drink and snobbery who view the world as quite their own.

Kylo launches out his seat. Hot in pursuit. So quick in fact it rattled back on its far legs as he rose out the thing so quick. Storming for the door. He almost yanked it off - ripping it clean of its hinges, like matchwood. If Hux wouldn’t care for her, the task fell to him. To protect his little Dove.

Iris made her way down the stairs. Stopping before she got to the foyer. She needed air and in search of it, she rounded the stairs up to the boxes and found a narrow dingy hallway which snaked out onto a dark alley.

The door was left wide open and cold slushy grey of night and the scent of damp and dirt spilled inside. Seeping onto the cold wet stone doorstep. Darkened by the spitting slush of rain.

She takes deep lungfuls of the bitter air. It hurts her lungs but the cool feels so soothing on her skin. Her skull still echoes with the nasty pain of headache. But the air helps aids her.

She no longer feels so suffocated. Stifled by this evening and her dress. Forcing herself to be civil to a heartless man she doesn’t want. It takes it toll of her already sore shoulders from carrying the weights if other people’s expectations.

Oddly enough, when she’s talking to Lord Ren, her worries and all those bothersome fretting’s leave her mind. For a second, she feels like someone sees her for the sheer value of herself. See’s and cherished her as a whole. It’s an awfully heady feeling for the likes of her; who always felt sought after merely for marital status and connection. She who was always made to feel like an example of regency gentility for marriage. And never having any dreams or aspirations beyond.

She sighs. Crosses her arms over herself. Hears the silk rasp. Feeling how the cold nibbles savagely at her arms. Stings her chest and turns her necklace to savage ice resting around her throat. Before she starts to shiver, she shifts herself from the doorway and turns to go back inside; entering back into her paltry monotonous existence.

The one that made her chest seize up in panic, the same thing clawing through her blood. The one that made her want to run fleeing every chance she got.

Damn family reputation. Damn propriety and society. She could run for the coast with the meagre pin money she has saved. Hidden behind the loose skirting in her bedroom. Behind the door. She’s gotten used to stashing the odd sixpence in the velvet pouch therein. She has a neat little sum tidied away by now.

She could go for the coast. Where no one knows her. Down and across to Dorset and seek for work. Or maybe Plymouth? Perhaps give herself a new name. Invent a dead husband who died in the war, invent a past that wasn’t at all true. Wear a wedding band that represented nothing more than a falsehood.

She may yet find work in some great grand house for a noble family. She has a good brain and much knowledge, she could be a Governess well enough. Teach young girls or young masters in the nursery. She was so vastly tempted by the idea. Atleast that way she’d have a life she could control.

She’d almost run away so many times. She was merely ten and four the first time she tried.

Barely longer in the tooth than Flora was now. And she’d wanted to bundle her meagre possessions into a carpet bag, and go scrounge together a life earning a measly palm full of pennies in some dirty gin soaked tavern on the outskirts of London, where no one would know her. Anything was a desirable alternative to staying and having her head bitten off day in day out by her mother. Always ready to find fault with her eldest.

Caroline Ashton’s fears of propriety and want for connection completely ate her up. There was no affection in her of any sort.

There wasn’t anything else there in the woman behind that porcelain front. Iris remembers learning that the day her mother clipped her across her cheek in a harsh slap for not getting the practiced dance steps right. That was the first night she dreamed of running away.

She regrets the memories now. They are no more than barbed reminders of her failed hopes. She’s never been brave enough to run. Her penance for her spoilt dreams. She’s stayed. She’s the biggest coward she knows of. Never could quite summon the guts to do it.

She sighs deeply. Turning and heading for her seat; the intermission began soon. She wanted to avoid the crowds if at all possible. She makes it just to the corner of the dingy hallway.

And where she’s looking down at her feet, when she looks up she’s gasping and jolting backwards at the sudden apparition of the man before her. Blocking all discernible light from the hallway beyond.

Stood there with his foppish mane of honey curls. His sapphire coat and his biscuit coloured breeches. Viscount Eversleigh. He stands. Smirking. Twiddling the golden sovereign ring around around around on his little finger. Anticipating her.

So suddenly she shrunk back with a gasp. “Lord Eversleigh.” Iris timidly greets him. Her back hits the wall where she stumbled.

“Iris. Isn’t it?” He seeks. She doesn’t care for the fumes of whiskey on his breath and on his jacket. Or his attentions. His manners. His looks. She didn’t care for anything and everything about him. And if he had a dog too? _Well_. She didn’t care for that either.

“We are not intimately acquainted.” She dismisses. He would never have known her first name.

He chuckled and stalks slowly towards her still. Backing her into the wall. She had nowhere else to go. Her hands scrabble against the smooth cold plaster. She can hear her heart hammering in her ears. Aware her chest is heaving and he notices this too.

“We could be...” He smarms at her. Smile tugging up. There’s a glazed look of something she can’t quite read in his eyes. And it’s bright and awful.

“Tell me, my dear, how long have you been lifting your skirts for Lord Ren?” He coos. Flattening her to the wall. His coat brushing her chest. “How long has he been fucking you?”

She’s mortified. And scared. Her mouth gapes. Such insulting speech. “I beg your pardon...” She gasps.

“Don’t be all missish. My dear. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. The way he pays court to you. Holds your hand. Much more than that redheaded prick does.” He scoffs. The shock of his foul language lands on her skin like the lashes of a cracking whip. They leave her sore and reeling.

“Indeed you are mistaken, Sir. And you are drunk.” She holds firm but her voice wobbles. She recoils from his breath as he stood over her. Intimidating. Hands flat to the wall by her shoulders.

One either side. He’s enclosing her. Trapping her. She turns her head to the side. Repulsed. He watches her neck corded, straining with each breath.

She feels the heat of his breath roll down her skin. “Please move...” She ushers lowly.

“How often does he get you under him? Hmm? Every day? Every week. Do you scamper over to his estate under the guise of running errands. Get on your back for him. Knees spread to the sky.” He drawls. “Bet you look a pretty picture... lying out under him, ready to be rutted.”

Iris glares up at him. She grits her jaw. She’s dealt with the foul four legged creature of fangs and venom that is her mother. Like a Greek harpy. She tries not to let this entitled man scare her.

“Get off of me.” She bites in a lethal little whisper. Full of rage and grit teeth. She almost shakes with it. He was making her feel lesser than her worth. She won’t stand for that. Not under any condition.

He smiles more. His hand skims down for her hip. Brute fingers rasping the silk. He grips the side of her thigh. Hard. He licks his dry lips and she wants to empty her stomach contents onto his shiny brown boots. “A man like me could make good use of such a gorgeous plump arse such as yours, Iris.”

She’s had more than enough. She brings her hand up, striking quick, she slaps him hard across the cheek. He’s too drunk and stupid to respond quickly. He had none of his wits about him.

She wriggles out from under him. Gathers up her skirts as a bundle in her arms and dashes away. She hears the commotion of him. His boots clack the tiles. He shouts and barks after her slurring. He sounds like he was following. Pursuing her.

And then it stops. It all stops.

There’s a garbled yell. Muffled and the yelling. And then, silence. Nothing but the sleeting rain pattering down on the stone doorstep where she was just stood. The wind howling down through the open door. Bringing the bitter frosty cold with it. Howling desolate down the eerily silent hallway.

“ _Turn back.”_ Comes that silvery honey voice in her head. The ancient one she can’t fathom to whom it belongs. It’s almost as if it’s always been there. Always croons sweet melodic things at her. The silvery voice that swims in her dreams.

“ _Turn back around. You’re perfectly safe little spark. There’s something you need to see...”_

Something terrible is ringing dark and violent down in her bones. It makes her slow to a stop.

She doesn’t know why. But something within her along with _that_ voice, calls upon her body to stop. And she turns back.

He wasn’t there-

She thinks she’s descending into madness. That she dreamt him. Or made him up. But then again, the fumes on his breath were far too vile for her to have conjured them up. Foul breath and sloshes of Scottish malt whiskey. She saw a stain on his collar where it had dribbled onto his chin. Down onto his cravat. She couldn’t have made up such an unnecessary detail as that.

She treads cautiously back down the tiled corridor she just fled down. Eyes flitting all over. She must be taking leave of her senses. Venturing back into the place where the man she ran from is residing.

She comes to the corner. Puts her cold hand to the wall to steady herself. The rain is louder. The wind howls more vicious. The cold pricks her skin like a ream of dressmakers needles rasping her into pain. The hair on the back of her nape stands to vulgar attention. Black nasty fear rotting in her veins like cloying syrup. Her heart feels too loud.

A whimper leaves her throat. Her chest pounds ragged with a shaky breath that leaves her in a tremble.

For there’s a handprint smear of blood and spraying droplets dribbling down the pale yellow wall just ahead.

Her gaze is drawn to the tiles of the floor, where little crimson drips shimmer in the half light, leading out the door. Into the raining and the dirt and the foul smog of the open brick alley way beyond.

Through the rain and the dark. She focuses on the big dark shape she can identify as a man. Hunched over. Her gaze is drawn downwards to the pair of wet brown boots. Dripping with something viscous and black.

Scarlet-black. _Blood_. 

Those lifeless legs and limp arms lay prostate against this humungous dark shape. Bowed over the soon to be corpse. Dark head bowed. Iris recognises the scent of the cologne fading in the air. Mint leaf. Sandalwood. And rich dark earth.

And she can hear slurping and groaning.

Her eyes cannot help but leak tears. Sheer fear bubbling up in her body.

She almost can’t comprehend what she’s seeing. Her eyes must be traitors. They’re lying to her. She can’t possibly be seeing this. This must be the death of her sanity. Throw it in a grave and cover it with soil. Mourn the loss of her saneness.

There’s a slick thud as the dark shape drops the figure in its arms. Bloodied pale hands, big wide hands, drop Eversleigh’s blue coat collar. The limp man looks comically small against this dark beasts proportions. He’s dropped to the mud and dirt of the alley floor. Strewn into the filth where he belongs. The dark shape puts one hand to the brick wall. Crimson cakes it’s round yet sharp fingernails. It’s human hands.

It turns its shaggy head back to her. It’s not a beast. It’s a man. With gold eyes ringed with garnet.

Lord Ren.

And there is blood smeared raw and dripping down his mouth. Over two sharp fangs protruding from his plump upper lip. Staining his teeth. Running in sticky red rivulets over his handsome chin and dribbling down his white silk waistcoat.

  
  
He looks right into her. Pierced into her eyes and stunned her brain, persuading her not to move so much as one muscle.

She can’t know how long they stand there gazing at each other. Kylo stalks in to her. Sleeting slushy rain dotting on his hair. On his shoulders. On his blood stained front. She shrinks to the wall. Tears silver in her shimmering eyes.

She wants to speak. She can only stare. He’s nearing the doorstep.

“Little dove...” He seeks. Panting. Her eyes catch on the way that even his usually white teeth are bleeding crimson. It sticks in the cracks between them.

“Wh-what...” She seeks. Shakes her head in disbelief.

“Iris. I will not hurt you. I offer you no threat. Believe me.” He pledges. Reaching out a steady bloodied hand to her. Raising them both. Showing her he means his word. He means no danger to her. _Never to her._

_“_ There’s this voice in my head.” She begins in a sob. Shakily pointing at her throbbing temple.

“And it’s telling me to... trust you.” She cries. Conflicted by the blood lusting monster she sees in the man before her. Caught in those haunting eyes and the blood and the gore of this shocking moment.

Kylo is moved by the fact Iris can hear Draegan in her head. Ever the lenient one. He was reaching out.

“You trust that voice?”

She nods. “I must be mad.”

“You are not mad.” He soothes. “What I am is as real as you or I, standing here right now.”

As real as the bee stings of cold rain he can feel on his cheeks. The wet stickiness of his tamped down hair. The wind on his skin. And Eversleighs blood in his throat. Tasted like warm metal and whiskey spice.

Her eyes drift back to the slumped man in the dirt on the alley floor. “Is he?” She gasps. Seeking as to his state of life.

Kylo doesn’t tarry in his answer. But he keeps his words soft. “Yes.”

For the way he assaulted her, Kylo should’ve taken his head clean off. He’s done it before.

Hearing the vile thoughts in the drunkards perverted head about all he wanted to do to her when he got her alone, it well justified Kylo’s ridding the earth of the bastard letch by ripping his neck out. He turns back, nudged the tip of his boot into the man’s head. Turns the bastards throat away so she wouldn’t have to see the gore.

When he twists back, Her gaze sticks on the harsh glare of gold that was his eyes that were usually the deepest handsome shade of russet. _Such savage eyes._

A terrible thought clicks in her head like snapping bone. “All those deaths of late... the wild animal attacks. It was- you?....”

“I’m afraid so.” He answers her curious questions.

She gasps anew. “It all makes sense now. And that Wolf...” She begins. “The one with the golden eyes.” The pieces start slotting together.

  
  
He nods. 

Her mind can’t make sense of this insensible thing.  
  


She expects to wake up any minute and this be the dizzying reaches of some far off, fantastic fever dream. Scrabbling first her bedclothes as the dream fades from her imagination.

“D-Do you wish to kill me, Kylo?” She whimpers.

He looks agonised. “ _No_. Iris.” He pleaded to her so honestly.

“ _No_.” He croons.

“In fact if anything happened to you, it would most likely kill _me_.” He assures her.

Her mouth gapes again. He watches those rosebud pink lips part. There is nothing but majesty and integrity on his face. In his features.

“I hardly know what to say...” She admits.

“I didn’t intend for you to find out the nature of what I am, in such a manner as this.” He confesses.

“You were going to confide in me?” She seeks.

“Yes I was. But when I saw this stupid drunk sneak after you. I had no choice. My hands were tied upon the matter. I could not have you hurt.”

“You did it to save me.” She comments.

“Of course I did, my dove.” He explains.

“I-“ She’s so moved she can hardly form words. Questions zip and crackle around her head like a crackling roaring fire. Like splintering logs fluttering with sparks.

She’s so dazed and enchanted. She almost doesn’t hear the applause come from inside that signifies the start of the intermission.

Kylo’s voice snaps her out of the stunned haze that swims in her mind like a pool of thick dark black treacle. She can’t free her arms or legs. The thick of it is swallowing her whole. His voice manages to finally disturb her out of it.

“Iris. You need to go. _Now_.” He tells. Eyes flicking upwards, hearing the clamour from within of footsteps and clattering doors. Crowds are descending. They can’t he found like this.

She barely summons the energy to move. “How will you-“ She looks back at the lifeless corpse of Lord Eversleigh.

“I’ll take care of it my Dove. But you must not spare a worry for me. You must go now.” He orders gently.

She slips around the corner and walks quickly away. Quitting the scene. Kylo watches until she moves out of sight. Her blue silk skirts trail away. He watches her as she moved back into polite society.

He looks down at the corpse and the blood seeping into the dirt. His pretty gentle Dove is back into the folds of politeness and civility.

  
  
How fitting;

The beast is out here. Confined out into the filthy muck and the snow and the blood, where he belongs. Outside, banished to the shadows.

~


	12. Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The timing of this is a bit not great considering the state of the world; but still it will further our lovebirds story ❣️

She’d never been more grateful to slam a door behind her in all her life. The sigh that leaves her lips when she presses her back to the wood is the largest she’s ever taken, she’s certain of it.

She had to escape. It was a necessity of sorts- she couldn’t suffer another second of it.

Mother was livid about last night. Iris had been frozen out of her favour - more so than usual - with frosty silences and glowers and glares of displeasure.

When she returned from her shocking interlude out of doors with Lord Ren and the sadly ex-Viscount Eversleigh, Caroline tugged Iris aside and snapped her ear off about decorum and politesse. She returned to Hux’s side and said naught. She couldn’t.

Her mind was overrun by visions of crimson stained fangs, scarlet on ivory bone. And eye’s as gold as wheat sparkling in the sun.

She barely felt the rest of her night. Or saw or heard her relatives around her. She drew into herself.

Lord Ren did not return for the second half. Hux crowed loudly and smug about his absence. Mother sneered, she too seemed pleased. Iris saw none of that.

The night passes and the next day her head is still splitting at the seams. Pain thudding behind her temples and out her ears. Her throat is tickling raw. She suspects a cold coming on. Yet she goes about her chores and errands same as usual. There’s a permanent gnawing ache gathering between her shoulder blades. It burns every time she moves.

Mother seemed determined to remind her of her discourtesy last night. When her, Flora and Posy all sit down to take tea in the front parlour and do their embroidery, Caroline besieged Iris to write a missive to Hux apologising for her conduct of late. To explain herself and her actions. Sacrificing, displaying herself out on the worshipping altar of Hux’s forgiveness.

Iris couldn’t see the sense in it. She’s sat there squinting down in her lap, trying to focus on stitching more infernal thread through the embroidery hoop. Her mother is snapping and fussing and correcting her every cursed move. She’s insulting and sniping and Iris can’t take much more.

She was most insulted that Lord Ren had quit the theatre early especially when he was invited at a proxy invitation. She scoffs that that’s his foreign mannerisms that don’t excuse his rudeness. Probably took off with one of the ‘actresses.’ They were all painted women. He most likely found amusement between a tawdry, painted woman’s thighs.

Iris’s heart sinks at the untrue insinuation. She’s also suffering after a very much sleepless night after the discovery of Lord Rens... particular disposition.

She spent half the night awake; her mind whirring with thought. All those tales and fibs she’d been fed as child about monsters under the bed. And here she is many many years later, as a woman, finding out that all the creatures in clawing dark nightmares do exist.  
  


The darkest shadows do after all bear beasts.

She can’t help wondering what other demons might roam hereabouts? Other horrid things too frightful to utter.

Mother doesn’t stop her poisonous crusade of nastiness on Kylo.

Before long, Iris’ eyes are watering with the sharp pains of her head. Her heart is beating so hard it hurts - thrumming proud with the constrained want to defend Lord Ren as she sits there ripping him to shreds and goading Hux’s perfect conduct upon her.

Iris throws her needlework aside and storms out. Insists she going for a lie down. She tears across the room and shuts the parlour door. Hot tears dribble out the corners of her eyes. Stings at her skin.

She stands there- and as she does, looking into the foyer, right at the coatrack. Her need to flee is looking better and better.

She dons her bonnet and shabby coat and before she can fully know what she’s doing, before she can even stop herself, she’s going. She needs actions and she needs fresh air. Much good a walk would do her. She slips down to the kitchens and is out the back door before even a kindly warning from their nice natured cook could halt her actions.

They heard Caroline’s vile shouts and screeches. Slamming of doors. And now they see her fleeing in tears. It wasn’t any grand difficulty to piece together all that had passed.

Iris wanted to slam doors. To hit things with her balled up fists. To kick and claw and scream about how much her suffocating life was mauling all capacity for happiness out her. She wants to rip things apart til her fingers bleed. Til her bones ache.

As it stands, her neck hurts with the strain of her clenched tight teeth, grit hard. Her back is shuddering with pinched complaint. She hardly comprehends how enraged she is; how fast her legs are stalking her away into the gardens. Up into the woods.

Her throat is raw and her head is pounding. She shouldn’t be out of doors in a thin dress and coat and in her sorry state. But staying in that wretched parlour was not an option.

She’s so _préoccupée_ she doesn’t even turn her head to look at the wicked sky churning behind her storming path. The weather upon the horizon was turning most foul indeed.

The air above the wood is heavy and dark. Black as a fresh bruise. It fully pierced the sky’s colour. The wind whips viciously cold and that’s how she knows rain is lurking not far off. Everything is so still and the woods are damp with snow that the rain will pelt away. This was the deep breath before the plunge. The whole landscape is waiting. Perching on a razors edge.

Every tree is poised and even the birds have quieted. It’s as if every creature has fled from the threat of the violent storm. Iris is the only one oblivious.

She treads on onto the woods. Needing distance. Needing quiet. Needing to hear nothing and feel nothing but her feet shaking from her footsteps pounding the dirty damp earth. Sinking into the leaves and the mush and crunch of the foliage on the woodland floor.

She wants to move and flee and be somewhere else where she doesn’t feel so crushed.

Her lungs heave dry where she’s running and gasping for breath. Throat sore with the cold air. Chest ice cold from where she hasn’t buttoned up her coat. She feels everything burning at her skin. Making her clammy where the icy winds scrape over her as she soldiers on.

She lets the surroundings soothe her. Tries to let the calm of peaceful woodland soak into her mind. Let it pierce the tempest of her quaking soul. The meat and tissue of her flesh that feels like she’s being ripped apart piece by piece. She feels gouged and compressed by all the pressure she’s under. It’s too much. She thought she could bear it nobly but she’s not strong-her back is breaking.

She crumbles into the nearest tree. Let’s it take her weight and keep her standing.

She tears off her infernal bonnet and jams her brow against the wood. Taking deep lungfuls of air spiced with the fragrances of the wood. Wet bark, dewy sweet grass and the mucky mud of earthy leaves rotting under the grip of domineering snow.

She feels her breath ghost out her lips. Feels it chill and dry her parched mouth. She lets more tears fall. Just for a second. Before she has to button up her coat and return to her trap of a life. Shut the sweet song-dove back into their dismal stifling little birdcage.

That’s when she feels it- a raindrop.

It pats heavily down upon her head. Cold and harsh like a sudden strong bee sting, out of nowhere.

She presses a hand to the tree and looks to the heavens. Where all is smoke black and dismal grey. Clouds seethe and roil up above the treetops. Raindrops shimmer between the tall trees. Iris feels more patter down. Striking down her cheek. A stab of rolling ice. More follow it.

She looks across the woods as the patters turn to downpours. The clouds part like a cracked grey eggshell and the heavens pour and flood out.

Chilling heavy rain now hammers everywhere around her. In her hasty fit to get away from home, between the blurred nature of her tears and her looking down, she doesn’t entirely realise she has walked herself miles.

Miles upon miles- she’s almost in the next county even. She’s in the tall dark woods near large country estates. Unfortunately no house she’s near, is anyone of her acquaintance. She can’t beg at the door for shelter from the storm.

She shoves her bonnet back on. A valiant attempt to keep her head dry. Tied up the soggy blue ribbon under her chin. It now sits there limp. Flopping uselessly. Dripping water down onto her chest.

She buttons up her coat and thankfully finds her grey calfskin gloves in her pocket. She slips the things on her numb hands. The material clings and sticks dreadfully to her reddened palm. She’s trembling with cold before long.

She curses herself. Bitterly. “Stupid. Idiotic, foolish and thoughtless...” She yelps loudly when her shoe catches on a tree root and sends her sprawling to the wet earth. She lands hard on her elbow and bashed her shins on the knotted roots of the unyielding tree.

Dizzy with pain she hisses and heaves herself up. Mud oozes up between her clawed fingers. Her knees stab the earth as she scrambled up. Her coat now befouled with great splotches of claggy mud.

The wind whips up terribly. Thrashing the whole forest with rain. Thrashing her too. Her coat catches to her wet skirts. Hem damp with sticky mud and wet. A chill slides down her back. Treacherous weather sneaking under her collar and soaking down between her shoulder blades.

She seized the two sides of her coat tighter about herself and pressed on. Where she stomps and runs through puddles, wet mud and cold cold rain splashed up her legs. It already bled through her cracked boots and her stupidly thin stockings. Her feet are freezing and she has lost sensation in her hands already.

She hasn’t made it more than a matter of yards and she’s already soaked through to her skin-Hell. To her bones.

She’s trying not to quiver too much. Make her body concentrate on stepping her out the wide open woods that offer little cover. Maybe she can find a sturdy squat tree to shelter under somewhere?

She heads for the muddied little track of the lane she can see far up ahead. It cuts a carved path of worn dirt through the woods. She knows that lane is betwixt two estates.

She sadly had walked too far to remember which two. It could be Lord Havisham’s land. And he was famously an old curmudgeon who was damnably strict about who he let wander on the barest fringes and borders of his vast property.

A soaking wet idiot girl from the village was not a preferred sparkling vision of a desirable houseguest.

She shambles onto the road. Earth sinking soggy beneath her soles. Arms wrapped around herself. Grazes stinging her arms from her earlier fall. She huddled tighter to herself to stop the shaking. It didn’t help. Her whole body wracks viciously with it.

She feels shame creep up her spine. Slithering flushed and awful into her blood. She’d been a over-reactive fool. Running out blind into a storm of all things. She trudges along the sticky muddy road. Now the rain is pelting so hard, it’s sneaking through her straw bonnet. Even her brain feels like it’s shaking. Rattling inside her skull like some fevered thing desperate to be let loose.

She slips quickly along to the next field. The long grass tears at her skirts. Claws more dew drops at her wool coattails. Leaves and blades of grass grip at the wool. She kicks through the long thrashing grass and wildflowers.

Boots wrapped within the clinging long vines. She makes it to the slippery wood style, heaves her leg over the thing. She hears her white cotton dress snag and tear on the nails punctured into the wood. She rips her skirts away. She doesn’t have the capacity at present to be saddened over that instance.

She balances her numb hand on the wooden post as she swings her leg over. She’s trembling so much she nearly falls again. Somehow she manages to keep upright a little longer. Her knees now knock together and each shivering step weakens her legs. Her muscles are all sore and burning.

She treads carefully though these woods. As the gradient is steep. The forest spills down a tumbling hill. By the time she gets to the bottom of the muddy slope, her bones ring with the effort. She pauses to catch her breath against the nearest tree.

She trips over rocks in the path, sends her sprawling on her front again. She yelps and winces at the pain that bursts through her.

And this time she can barely stand. Instead easing herself onto her hands and knees. She groans. She wills her stupid body to work. She sobs tears of frustration and they don’t even feel warm on her face. She tries so hard to crawl. She would crawl home on bleeding hands and knees if she must-

She watches the grey haze of rain pass over the brown-green wood before her. It shatters hard off every leaf and douses every trunk of every tree. She hears the loud drum of it swim in her ears. She’s so cold now and senseless. Her coat feels heavy. Her arms are too tired to lift. As are her legs.

Heavy. Heavy. So heavy.

She sags into the soggy earth. On her side. Absolutely drenched in mud and hammered by rain. Her bonnet saves most her hair from the mud. But she feels long wet coils of it, where her coiffure is dishevelled, seep onto the earth. Burdensome and damp. Wringing wet and now stuck with leaves and muddy forest debris.

She must look frightful. Laying here in the dirt. And even her bones are shivering. Every cell of her vibrates with cold.

Iris wonders if she’ll die here- slipping into a nice, deep sleep. Quivering herself into an early grave.

Like drowning. Only softer. Less strenuous. She doesn’t have to kick and fight the waves or currents. She can look up at at the sky or the tips of the trees that rain blazed between. Raindrops sting and bash at her eyes. Rolling down her pale cheeks like the tears she can’t manage anymore. The sky cries for her.

She would’ve liked to have seen the night sky - all those stars and the full moon - one last time. But she is not so lucky as to be the one fated with control over her own death.

She watches the woods til her exhausted eyes swell shut. Lashes wet. Sticks to her face. Her body seized up. Even breathing seemed to ache too much. It’s too sharp. Too much effort.

Her lips were almost now as blue as her coat. And she doesn’t care anymore. About anything. About anyone. She can’t. She’s tired. She’s far too tired- this seems like a good peace. A good soft ending.

Death could either be so ineffectual or violently unfair for a woman. She’d either fade away as a decrepit old bat with barely a teaspoons measure of wit left in her head. Drift away in her sleep very hushed, and then she’s forgotten. Some other paranoid mad old crone who gets shut up forever in her wooden box in the ground.

Or in childbirth. Maybe that what would be the thing to take her. Aching and yelling and sweating, Swelled with fever. Drained from blood. Bleeding her life away whilst she’s split open and raw between her legs and some ugly squat pink infant wails for her from its crib.

This way seems far kinder- a mercy, really. They’ll put her in a stiff little box, cover it with unscented white flowers and bury her in the Pembleton chapel graveyard. Down in the soil with the other bones of the dead, and the moss and the worms. People would say it was a tragedy; but her loved ones may take comfort in the fact she died doing her duty by her husband.

Such a miserable thought. Rotting away to a skeleton in the hot box in the sweat of earthy soil. The sun bleaching down. The rain soaking in. The frost stiffening her. It seems like such a still eternity when her life has always been busy.

Better it’s her. Now mother can have the exuberant Posy to pin her hopes and demands on. The second eldest sister. The flirty one who tries harder. The weight will finally be lifted off her own shoulders.

It will settle in the ground with her and spill and seep, and bleed into the soil. Her worries will fade as surely as her head will decay away to dust.

A great snap cracks the wet air in half. Splinters it to shards.

Now it’s thundering- most excellent.

She doesn’t know why the clouds are bothering with an unnecessarily noisy fan fare. As it is, she can’t possibly get any wetter.

She can hear the great gallops of it striking the earth. Booming. Clapping quick through the air. Like the beating skin of a army drum being pounded. Actually. It wasn’t thunder. It was- closer to earth. Not quite as sky bound.

It starts off far away and it invariably grows steadily louder. She almost wishes to sit up and shush it to silence. But that would require movement and her body is too busy melting into the cold moist earth. Moulding in with the leaves and moss. Churning into the oozy mud and the carpet of frost that the rain is eating away.

The rhythmic thunder ceases to be quieted. For it can’t.

She grumbles a groan of a breath that crackles out of her sore throat, and she struggles but contrives to peel open her heavy eyes.

All she can see is that same hazy grey of the rain in the distance. The silver blur inbetween the trees.

Suddenly it is interrupted. There’s a dark shape bounding towards her. Her mind would make some inappropriate joke about the devil coming to take her soul if her brain hadn’t been rattled to absolute bits by her shivering.

She blinks, it takes every ounce of energy she has left. The shape is tall and getting taller. Bleeding upwards. The top is wider, where the bottom is thinner. Two long sculpted shapes, like black stalactites, and they move, leaning forwards, then two more behind those do the same.

The shape pounds the ground. Churning up dirt and muddy water. Her eyes focus enough to then recognise a very wide pair of horses hooves.

Slowing in rapid succession toward her. The hooves were as wide as her head. It was an enormous animal this black horse. It’s fetlocks were massively muscled. Formed big and sheared with long black feathering.

A Shire horse? Maybe even bigger than that still. She can hear the massive beast above her, snorting. She hasn’t yet sought out sight of of the rider.

She would raise her eyes if it didn’t ache so much. She feels the drips of rain patter over her dry lips. She opens her mouth to speak. In attempting movement, she closes her eyes and tries to twist around, splaying herself into more mud. She doesn’t want to even comprehend the mess of her coat or dress. The sad sorry miserable state of her.

She must look so pathetic - and that ragged on her dignity. What little of it there is existing.

They call out. It’s all a mumbled blur to her. A deeply dark tone that sounds muffled. As if coming from underwater.

She tries to apologise to this mystery rider she’s accosted. Wonders why they didn’t just stomp over her with their horses huge hooves and put her quickly out of her misery. Do her a favour.

The again, why on earth are they out riding in this stormy delude? Maybe they’re as nonsensical as her.

It never occurred to her that they were out here for her benefit.

“Iris...” comes the deep call through the rain. She intimately knows that rich voice.

She looks. It hurts, but she looks. A pair of black boots slam to the ground in her eye-line. Water and mud spraying everywhere under his fierce tread.

She twists up, wet hair sticks to her face. Her lips gape. Lord Ren? It can’t be. She can’t have walked _that_ far?

She peeks up, eyes as wide as saucers.

Yes. Yes, apparently she _had_ walked that far.

The adjoining land she’d forgotten. The one that Lord Havisham’s estate bordered on... it was Hellford Park. How in the living hell had he found her here?

He’s quite a sight to be devoured. This big wet vampire. Out in all this pouring rain.

He wears only a short and greatcoat. With dark breeches and mud splashed boots. His skin is as wet as hers, an icy rivulet runs off his chin. His white shirt is sticky and tamped to his big chest. If she could gasp at seeing it clinging like a second skin to his body, she would’ve. His wild dark hair is swirled and stuck to his head. That too drips on his coated shoulders.

She fancied if his coat gapes open any the wider, she’d be able to see the whole stretch of his naked chest. Again. The dark patches of his nipples and all those enticing peaks and dips in the muscle.

He moves so fast it makes her eyes hurt and head spin. His face is concerned. Bearing down a sad look at her.

Then he’s there. Above her. He’s kneeling in the dirt. Her numb body senses his hands scoop under her. She tries to speak but her tongue has nearly literally frozen - fallen right back down her throat.

Two big and ungloved hands slide under her. One under her shoulders, the other near the numb things she used to call legs.

She’s soaked to the bone and dirty with wet mud and she’s mortified with the way he clasps her so close to his skin. She’ll ruin his handsome coat. He’s just as icy cold as she is. Like old marble stone. She would speak, but her teeth are chattering out of her skull.

“Are you hurt?” He seeks. She shivers through a shake of her head.

He couldn’t stand to yank her up, and then have her shriek out in pain because of a broken bone he hadn’t foreseen.

He lifts her. In one mighty swoop, unsticks her from the earth and up away into his strong arms. Such musculature he has, it’s undeniably potent. Being held by him in this close a manner.

She tries to curl her tongue around some words. An apology. Or a question. He senses this. He’s softly speaking to her. Hugging her tight to his body in a close embrace.

“None of that now. Don’t try to speak. Don’t speak. Just keep your eyes open for me, little dove.” He instructs calmly to her. He walks them back to a horse she can only assume is Erland.

The great equine beast is already snorting and nickering. Lowering his legs so Kylo can hoist her on the saddle.

She barely grips onto the horse with her senseless fingers. He’s behind her in no time at all. Swings his body up and that compact wall of a body is behind her again. He seizes the reins and keeps her tucked close. Curled into his chest. Her head on his shoulder.

“I’ve got you.” He assures her. His breath hot on her temple. Such a scorching promise in comparison to the chilling rain. His words melt the cool on her skin.

One trunk of a big arm curling around her locks her to him. He coaxed Erland around, and dig his heel in the animals round bellied side. They race off through the stinging rain. The woods are a blurring black and grey mush to her. The stark of trees and rain battered undergrowth.

She feels Erland’s back arch as he rears up and clears a fence cleanly, taking it cleanly like it’s nothing. Kylo’s arm fixes around her. Crushing tight when they do. Ensuring she stays right there with him in the saddle seat. Braced right against his thighs behind, and the saddle horn in front. Her hip cradling the pommel.

She inches closer to him. Tucks her face into the crook of his neck. Uncaring for civility now. She clings onto him so tight her fingers leave creases in his clothes. Ten little crescent moons. She knots her knuckles to grip so tight in his sodden clothes that her wrists shake all the more.

They absolutely fly through the rain. She didn’t need to ride Erland to know he was a powerful horse bred for pulling. Clearly carrying two people posed no issues for him either.

He was as quick as ten horses. The Arabian in his blood made him a fast sort of beast. His legs and his hooves pounded the earth quicker than she could rationally comprehend.

She hears the tempo of Erland’s hooves shift when they come to a paved road. The clops echo louder. Ringing like tinnitus in her ears. Sharply striking her senses. Rattling in her head and bouncing from one ear and across to the other. Her head feels full of fluffy cotton. It’s ineffectual.

Kylo’s body lurched behind hers. Erland slows to a halt as bid by his master in his foreign Bavarian tongue. She sways forwards too. The weight of him disappears and she opens her sticky eyes, weakly clutching onto the leather strap of Erland’s tacking. Kylo is below her on the ground, sliding her off his stallions powerful back, into his arms once again.

She sees the steps afore them, leading up to the front of the house. The doors flung wide inwards. She hears him call sharp orders. She wonders if they are to her but then a most obedient stable hand appears as if out of nowhere, leads the horse away quick. Kylo’s carrying her again.

Storms her right up the steps in his hold. Muddy and soggy in his arms. Running quick with her. As fast as he can move.

She barely registers that they’re out of the rain and inside Hellford’s foyer. She recognised the pointed tiles of the floor. They blur her eyes at Kylo’s fast pace covering ground. His big thighs can stride quick and his booted feet rattle sharp clacks on the tiles.

He’s barking orders again. He used to command one of the largest companies of men in history. Orders are things he’s used to issuing. “Jomar. Stoke the fires in the guest bedchamber, now. Draw a warm bath. Not hot. Warm. If she heats up too quickly there’s every risk she’ll go into shock.” He demands.

There’s another hollow clack. She thinks it might be them ascending a staircase. The great dark mahogany one. He speaks again. “Have two maids sent up to the suite now. They’ll need to strip her and help rid her of her sodden clothes.”

His butler with the soothing honey and cinnamon for a voice answers him. “Of course, Your Lordship. I’ll send for Anna and Mrs Jones.” He assures him. Sending for the most competent maid and the brusque housekeeper. The one so stern she gave his strict regimental measures a run for its money.

Kylo whisks her away upstairs. She’s barely stopped shivering when he bursts them through a bedroom door that he roundly kicks open with the ball of his foot. Curses at the stubborn thing.

She’s sprawled back on a bed suddenly. Feather and down beneath her. Staring at a rosebud pink bed canopy. If she had the temerity to recognise where she was she’d have blushed into the next dimension.

She’s still shivering but she manages to curl up and sit, looking down to see his dripping dark head bowed as he teaches under her skirts, and takes one ankle to gently start on working off her muddy boots. Yanking it calmly off her foot with some urgency. Her hands fumble for her coat buttons. The heat of the house prickles at her skin. It burns.

She shudders a weak laugh. “Never-r thought I’d see a day w-when a peer of the r-realm would be ttaking off my boots.” She sniffs. Rainwater’s dripping down her nose. She looks down and sees the priceless silk eiderdown that she’s sat on. A lump lodged in her throat.

“I’ll soak the b-bedding...” She frets. Trying to work off her heavy slippery gloves. Not having much luck.

Kylo peers up at her. She sees the mud smeared over his hands. On his coat. The watermarks on the fine carpets. She feels wretched. Making work for others.

“Damn the bedding. Iris. It is replaceable. You are _not_. My first priority is getting you warmed again.” He insists.

Then, in a manner so intimate as nothing she’s ever felt in her life. He rises up and cups her cold face in one hand. His palm covers her jaw and most of her neck. She’s as icy as he is. He suddenly fathoms how dangerous that is.

“How-w did you f-find me?” She whispers quietly. Eyes boring into his own. They are that melting brown again. Gone was the gold and rampant red of last night.

She didn’t see the monster here today. She saw only a loving suitor.

“I told you.” He insists kindly. “I won’t have anything happen to you.” He ushers softly. Thumb stroking a sticky smear of mud and a wet coil of hair off her face.

“I felt you were in peril. That, I could not ignore. I could sense it was you from the second you stepped foot near my land.” He tells openly. He was after all, a territorial creature.

She’s not scared of him. She ought have her head examined-

She’s witnessed and heard what he can do to humans. She saw as much last night. She’s been stood on the fringes of conversations about the details of all the grizzly deaths of late. The ones where men were left parted from their arms and legs with their entrails piled and strung around them like garlands or bunting. It’s too frightening to even consider.

She saw none of that here, in him tonight. He rode out into a vicious storm to bring her home and get her warm; those didn’t seem like the actions of a soulless creature. Quite the contrary.

He can rip out throats or rip limbs off lesser mortal bodies and she _isn’t_ scared. He’s a dangerous warrior from an age long past.

She’s never been more wildly in love.

She’s curious about the other facets this beautiful man may be hiding. She’s determined to seek out more curiosities about his character, if it’s the last thing she does.

“T-thank-“ She begins to stammer. He merely smiles and shakes his head. His hair drops more rain onto his shoulders. It bleeds out his shaggy mane. Stuck swirled to his neck and ears.

He touches her cheek again. “I would rip this very world in two with my bare hands to keep you safe.” He assures.

Their moment is rudely interrupted as a fleet of regimented maids burst into the room. Some carrying water jugs to tip into the bath. A stout woman and a waify blonde cross quickly to where Kylo is knelt. The stout woman puts her hand on his shoulder.

“Your valet is in your chambers, my Lord. We’ll see to Miss Ashton, here. Never fret. We’ll soon see her right.” She persuades kindly.

He nods a quick crooked smile of thanks. And stands up. The polite maid smiles nicely helps Iris with her gloves. Unbuttons the soggy calfskin things and pulls them off. Kylo’s chest crushes at seeing the red raw of her cold palms. Her tiny elegant fingers pricked stiff and numb with cold.

“I’ll leave you in Mrs Jones’ capable hands. Little dove.” He takes his hand off her neck and smiles, before he turns to them both and softly orders. “Act as quickly as you can.”

Another whisper comes so softly, Iris barely hears it for the heavy rain still knifing at the window. It’s Kylo’s fear. His voice trembles with the worry. “ _Please_ look after her.”

“Of course. Your Lordship.” Mrs Jones replies firmly with great feeling. He turns away, with great difficulty taking his eyes off her and the soggy black shape of him trudges out the room. Leaving rain droplets and mud in his wake. Leaving the ladies to tend to her. He’s a big shape blocking up the doorframe and then he’s gone.

Iris swallows, nervous, freezing with cold, trembling still, and unused to such attention from staff. They’re unbuttoning her coat. She aches from head to toe. And she’s damnably tired. She wants to sink into this luxury bed and sleep like Hypnos.

“Here we go, pet. Don’t worry now. You’re in safe hands.” Mrs Jones smiles. They are kind. Far too kind. She doesn’t deserve such attention for her stupidity. And yet they’re being so patient.

Passing Iris a towel so she may wipe the muck from her face. She does. And when they divest her of everything get her down to her dripping cotton shift, Anna takes her wet things and then kindly housekeeper helps her stagger across to the bath on her weak legs. Her dark hair bleeds mud and wet down her shoulders. She doesn’t even wish to see the state she left the eiderdown in.

“You lean on me, now pet. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.” Mrs Jones assures. Leading Iris to the magnificent anteroom.

Where a steaming copper tub awaits. The fire in there too was stoked. It blazes off the tub like spun flickers of amber. The air smells of roses. No doubt a clever maid has tipped some fanciful oil in the tub for her. She’s very grateful.

She’ll be even more so to scrub the mud off her skin and hair.

Iris fights back a smile. And remarks to herself how she’s never been told to lean on anyone ever before.

It feels awfully nice not to take all the burdens alone for once.

~

Kylo’s sitting alone downstairs. In the grand echoing hall of Hellford’s dining room. Washed, dried and redressed. Somewhat uncommonly, at that. One that made Wilton, his valet, arch a wry brow at him. Which Kylo heartily and completely ignored.

He’d coughed a dry polite interjection. His cheeks reddened in scandal. He did always appreciate things done properly. Civility paid its due attention. As it should be.

“You will be dining alone with Miss Ashton Sir. Might you atleast consider a waistcoat?” He flusters. For Wilton that was practically him imploring him, begging on his knees.

Kylo rolls his eyes. After such an impassioned Aria as that, how could he refuse? He let’s him slip the velvet black, satin backed waistcoat up his shoulders. He buttons it.

He distinctly heard the man behind him sigh with newfound relief as he brushed off the shoulders. Kylo escaped the dressing room before he insisted on slipping him into full ceremonial dress.

He was adequate as he was. A fresh pair of dark breeches and boots. And just an undershirt on his top half. No cravat.

And now here he awaits his diner companion. In this cavernous room. He could hardly send her back to Westwell in such a weakened state. He’d have her fed and warmed to the bone before he sends for the carriage. He took great delight in penning a note to Mr Ashton. Telling him his daughter fell ill in his woods. He wonders what her greek harpy of a mother will make of that.

He smiles to himself as he scans around the room, looking to the doors again. Night was falling outside now. Rain still beats heavy on the windowpanes. The scuttle of it fills this room. His dining room.

Finely bedecked in scarlet and gold. The walls are an ornamental barque red wallpaper. The narrow room bears the same pointed black and white tile as the foyer. There’s an ancient mahogany table that he’s sure measures a mile long. When chandeliers or glassware and cutlery are placed on the far end, they glitter like far off stars. The ceiling is governed by three gigantic chandeliers that drop down shimmering gold and crystals from the high gilded ceiling. It’s every inch a rich room.

It’s mostly dark. Candles on walls and side tables lit. Fire blazing. Kylo is settled down the far end from the grand double doors. By the roaring great fireside. Cast in amber all around him.

His sleeves are rolled, and he’s relaxing on an upholstered scarlet wingback chair. One of a matching pair, set by the fire. The one opposite him is currently empty. He hopes Miss Ashton will be the one to fill it shortly.

Mrs Jones had stopped in earlier, poked her head through the door. Said Iris was well. No sign of illness brewing. She’d been bathed and successfully warmed up gradually. Inside and out. She was served two pots of tea, which she drank. And she was most glad to wash all the muck away.

Kylo thanked her for her efficiency. She really was a matriarchal wonder. He couldn’t do without her running this house the way she does. She smiles and bids him a good evening. Slips back down to the kitchens in time for the servants supper.

When the door creaks open again, Kylo leaps to his feet. Head twisting back in the direction of the doors. Face hopeful. When he sees it’s only Jomar walking through with a carafe of wine, and two glasses. Heading toward him.

Today his ever persistent Butler wears his usual robes. A cloaking Sherwani coat. The usual Dastar turban. Today it is a golden yellow like warm gold butter. His coat is an ivory satin. Stitched with beige embroidery of leaves and vines. The same dark dhoti puffed trousers on his legs tucked into his fine long boots.

He settles back down again. Sinking into the chair. Boots scraping on the deer pelt rug stretched across the floor.

“You seem unhappy to see me. Perhaps you were anticipating someone else? I even come bearing an awfully good vintage. A full bodied 1785 Bordeaux.” He smiles. Calling out to his master.

Kylo grumbles. “As enticing as your company is. You know how I much prefer the wine.”

“My lord. I’ve seen you drink the foulest of ale that basically equates to stale barley hops and animal urine. You will tip anything alcoholic down your neck for pleasure. You remain a Viking in some ways.” He corrects with a smile.

“I haven’t drunk in a manner like that since 1632.” Kylo defends as Jomar places the fat bottomed wine carafe on the end table next to his lord. Stands the glasses down next to it. Unstoppering the decanter and pouring the velvety ruby-black wine into the class.

“And you would do the same if you to live around the bloody puritans.... most dull people ever to exist on the face of this earth. That sodding lot and their covenants and bloody purity without sin would drive a monk to tears of boredom.” He whinges.

“Yet. You bear the dissatisfaction so nobly.” Jomar jests. He never passed up a chance to sark at his grumpy Lordship. Handing Kylo the glass wine goblet. He takes it gently. Sips it. Doesn’t want to admit to his butler how right he is.

Jomar knows. He sees the annoyed little twitch tug at he corner of his masters mouth. He stoppers the wine again. Looking too wholly satisfied. He stands with his hands folded behind his back. As if waiting for more.

Kylo glares sharp at him over his glass as the red wine stains his lips. “Pray what is it now?” He asks and is met with a smug smirk.

“Don’t expect me to sit here and gossip with you like some giggling waify bluestocking.” Kylo grumps. Jomar smiles wider. Not the least put off by his grousing.

“Don’t you have duties to attend to?” Kylo adds. “Staff to order about... go and- polish the silver or wind the clocks or do something insipid, would you...” He urges.

“No duties at present are as urgent as this.” He grins. His Butler won’t budge. He was famously obstinate. That’s why he’s able to serve Kylo so well as he does. They are two peas in a pod.

If Jomar had been a lesser man maybe he would have put up with Kylo’s snipes and bore them all in silence. Kylo’s secretly glad he doesn’t. He likes a healthy challenge. Part of his Viking spirit he believes.

His Lordship sighs and rolls his eyes. Cursing heaven and hell and everything inbetween the two.

“Mrs Jones tells me our pretty houseguest is well recovered from her tumble in the rain.” His walnut brows arch softly up his forehead. Cocoa brown eyes glimmer with loving insinuation.

“You and your confounded relations have wanted to see me married, since before Queen Elizabeth I took to the throne.” He strops.

“She’s an excellent match for you. So I understand it.” He continues on as if Kylo has not spoken. He always did.

“I will dock your wages if much more of this insolence continues.” Kylo’s threatening. But he can’t help the smile that breaks his lips.

“I was just curious, is all. And If you do perchance happen to persuade that sweet darling girl to marry you, then please make it somewhat soon. You’ve been alone for eons too long. You really could benefit from loving someone again.” He turns to quit the room with a polite bow. The fire light shines off his marigold yellow silk dastar.

“And also please host your nuptials as soon as. Because then in that circumstance, Mrs Jones will owe me 20 shillings.” He remarks as he takes his leave. He listens to Jomar’s footsteps fade away. Clacking away into echos in the grand room.

Kylo wants to roll his eyes. He settles for drinking some more. “Begone. You wily cur.” He smiles, calling loudly after his retreat.

Jomar talks loudly as he gets to the doors. For Iris is just walking through them. He smiles at her widely. Hands folded demurely and stiffly behind his back. He hears Kylo clatter to stand to attention down the room. Hears the scrape of the chair legs whine on the polished floor.

“Miss Ashton. We are all relieved to see you so well recovered.” He insists. His smile creases his cheeks. He really does have the most sincere smile. And he always smells faintly of mango’s and coconut. Something in his cologne perhaps? Or an oil for his beard. A richly exotic delightful scent. Always draws stronger when he moved closer.

Iris blushes. Well embarrassed and appraised of how the whole house seemed to be aware of her foolish misfortune. Servants gossip. It’s as certain a fact as the sun rising in the east.

“Your staff are most attentive and kind. Mr. Jomar.” She tells him brightly. She looks pale to his eye. But he supposed she’s had quite an ordeal to undergo.

Her brow is a little dewy and her cheeks warm. Her eyes seem very bright with something. He puts that down to the warmth of her surroundings.

She’s dressed in the only spare ladies clothes they kept hereabouts. A new nightgown and shift. Mrs Jones bumbled her up in a long crushed red velvet gown, the colour of split veins, and gave her a golden tasselled shawl to link about her shoulders too. For extra measure.

“Might I bring you anything, Miss Ashton?” Jomar seeks.

“That will be all. Please serve dinner as soon as cook is ready.” Kylo calls from down the hall.

“Enjoy his royal grumpiness. Miss Ashton.” Jomar cheeks before he bows and steps past her. Shutting the door in his wake with a glass smile.

She looks down the room. Painfully aware that she’s been left all alone with Lord Ren. He stands. Awaiting her. A true gentleman through and through.

She walks to meet him. He examines her as she comes closer. He’s afraid his eyes don’t know which part to settle on first. Her hair is unbound. Glossy and fluffy. Recently soaked and dried by the fire. Still a touch damp he reckons. If he curled his fingers around those long strands, he’d still be able to feel a kiss of damp.

Her hair is thick. He never knew that before. It always being up in a coiffure was difficult to measure. And when she’s lying down it’s tucked behind her head. Here, as it seats down, he can see the volume and body on those walnut-chestnut golden brown curls. It stretched right down her back. Almost to her shoulder blades. She looks divinely pretty and wild. Untamed. Like that very first day he laid eyes on her.

He wants to feel that unbound silk on his palms as he cups her cheeks to kiss her-

He swallows. Now applauding her dress. A gown and those silly little slippered stockings on her feet. No stays or pinching necklines. She looks relaxed and it makes him feel so stirred up to see it.

“How are you feeling?” He steps closer when she finally nears the fire. That dining table was surely the very length of Britain itself.

He can’t sense anything the matter with her. She’s over warm but he blames that on his own overzealous orders to see her warmed through. She looks rosy cheeked and healthy enough. Her energy waning a little but he suspects she’s most likely hungry and tired.

“I am much better. And might I just say, thank you greatly for your assistance. I feel a complete fool.” She blushes redder. Looking ashamed.

“One can not predict the weather in this cursed ever mutable country.” He insists.

“And I rather thank your foolishness. Had it not been so- I might thereafter have been dining alone tonight.” He flatters.

“Please, come and sit. You need rest.” He insists gently.

Moving closer and pressing a hand lightly to the back of her waist. She moves towards the chair opposite to his. Listens to the storm rattle at the windows and howl at the roof. It seemed almost determined to get inside with them. Clawing at Hellford’s outer walls.

She relaxes into the seat. Her gown almost moulds into the same shade of the chair. She sits back and lets the fire warm her. Although she feels overheated.

She supposed it’s cause she was so chilled earlier. She can’t differentiate between the two extremes. Her whole body now feels heavy. Her chest feels too tight even though she isn’t wearing her stays. Just loose cotton. But her ribs feel bruised. Every breath feels too short somehow.

Kylo stays standing and pours her some wine. “I’ve sent a note to your father at Westwell explaining what events unfolded.” He tells her.

She thanks him again as he hands her the wine. “I’m surprised my mother wasn’t kicking down the doors to rescue me safely home.” Iris insists after sipping the drink.

Kylo’s smiling. Settling himself back in his chair. Wine to hand. Legs splayed out comfortably. One bent, one reclining out gently. “Mrs Ashton is my severest critic.” He remarks.

“Believe me. I pay her criticisms little mind.” Iris insists. He smiles wider. _Good_.

He watches her as she stumbles around asking a question. Not quite knowing where to begin...

“Forgive my impertinence around such a subject. But I see no other way to approach asking it..” She begins. Wetting her lips and meeting his dark eyes. Those rough cut gemstones encloses in shadows.

  
“About last nights, um- events...” She starts.

“Iris. I’m more sorry than I can say for what you witnessed last night. To see death so violently. I know it was shocking for you. I can see it stunned you. It stuns most people to discover what I truly am.” He offers plainly.

“And your staff... do they, well- _know?_ ” She asks in a hush. Whispering.

“The ones I know explicitly do. Jomar and Mrs Jones. The rest may circulate whatever rumours they wish. I haven’t confirmed nor denied it. It would scare a lot of people. If it’s not self absorbent, I believe a great amount of speculation flourishes in my wake.”

“I am more intimate with the staff and tenants at my castle. Back home. I defend my territory from the savage appetites of feral new sires and I loyally protect the people who live on my lands. I however saw no reason to shock whole legions of the local staff I hired when Hellford park was opened here.” He offers.

“New sires?” She asks. Kylo senses she’ll have more questions to ask before the night is out. If she didn’t she was a simpleton and he’d never accuse her of that.

“Vampires are creatures that are made or turned. Little Dove. Not born as mortals are.” He remarks.

“New Sires are as feral as a roaming pack of starving wolves. The hunger when it first comes... there’s no mania of man that can match to it. It’s like death visits you twice. But keeps you sensate for every agonising moment. It’s worse than fever or plague. You’d do anything to feed to chase the hunger away. It rots at your gut. Makes you do horrible things. Vilest of things.” He makes plain.

“You were turned?” She enquires. He hopes she won’t faint. But he sees she’s made of sterner - more curious mettle - He’s rather glad she’s sat down.

He nods calmly. “I was.”

“One thousand and twenty seven years ago.” Comes his casual offering.

Draegans face flutters on his mind for just a second. The pale pierce of his eyes. The silk of his silver hair. The sharp savagery of his silver tongued smile. He blinks his past away. Out of his head.

Her mouth hangs open. “My goodness.” She gasps. “You do look remarkably... uh- well. Considering your age.” She stumbles. He chuckles at her reaction. Trying to wrap her head around it all.

“In my many advancing years. I’ll snatch whatever flattery I can get.” He states warmly. Smirks darkly at her. Almost flirting. She smiles.

“I’ve heard of your kind in folklore. Passed on in tales from ancient civilisations all around the world. Campfire horror stories I’m sure- predictable drama in Gothic Penny novelettes.” She tells. “But I never suspected-“

“Monsters like me truly exist?” He jokes. Laughs a little. She smiles too.

“I don’t think you’re a monster.” She comments in a tiny voice. So honest. So sweet. It touches the vacant pit where his heart should be.

“Little Dove. Every culture and manner of people that there has ever been, has had creatures like me stalking and hunting in the dark of their shadows.” He promises.

“It’s been that way since the dawn of time.” He eluded.

“At the risk of another impertinence; had you a family?” She asks. The honesty as tragedy of his smile gives her the biggest answer.

“Centuries ago I used too. Naturally. There’s only me left. A mother and father, of course. Two little vexing brothers...” He tells. “I stopped mourning all their passings a long time hence.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry. I can only imagine how strange it must be, to be the only relation left.”

Kylo’s smile is pensive. “I still have a family of some kind surrounding me. I have an impertinent butler and a matron of a housekeeper who resolves to mother me as if I were a boy again. Some friends who are, shall we say.... cursed with the same predilection as myself. It is not such a lonesome existence.” He tells.

He did have a lover. Once upon a time. But even his short fuse of a temper eventually took care of that.

He walked away from the greatest love of his life. His seething anger over his turning ate him up. He felt controlled, abused. Suffocated by his control. Their bond was a trap to him. No longer was it the freedom he first thought. Draegan was eclipsing his life. He was fed up of being in his pocket, hailed as his favourite warrior. _His fierce one._ As he called him.

He was sick of his Norse endearments. Because Draegan was the kind of lover to endear him in his own native Norse tongue. Kylo quickly made up his mind to leave him. After decades of being together. He felt used. Felt like Draegan only turned him to use him as a puppet. His strength and power were commendable - and exploitable.

He took it out on everyone surrounding him, but himself. Turned the pain and rage outward. That night in the snow after battle when he was turned into a vampire, Kylo had been promised the world and he left Draegan to finally go and take what he felt he was owed.

He didn’t regret the parting then. He was glad of it. He severed his ties. Sheared his hair short, and cut off his viking courting braids. Turned his back on his lover and his maker. Took the world for his own as a lone wolf. He regretted it bitterly now. After all these years.

She nods in gentle understanding. If anyone can comprehend an existence devoid of people who love her, and show appreciation openly. It’s certainly her. Posy and Flora only show her affection of they’re after a pair of earrings. Or some bauble or trinket or her slippers for a ball. She doesn’t see her father enough to have a kind word. Though he oft has plenty for her. And her mother? Woe betide she ever hears an encouraging syllable cross her lips.

“Well. I for one feel most sorry for you Lord Ren.” She begins. He looks confused.

“You left your castle in Bavaria for an enticing and relaxing english country excursion, and all you seem to be doing is saving foolish damsels who find themselves in distress.” She offers. “Hardly a peaceful leisurely winter.” She adds over his chuckling.

“I’ve said it before, I will repeat myself gladly. I found a damsel who is infinitely worth saving.” He comments. She feels her blush creep down her neck. She smiles down into her lap. Holding her wine.

She peers into the flames next to them. Draws the shawl tighter around herself. Kylo stands and offers to refill her wine glass. She hands it across and their fingers brush. Static and molten heat fizzle through her blood. He’s still so cold. She’d always thought it a matter of poor circulation perhaps. Now she understands why that might be the state of his skin.

“You must have so many fantastic tales to tell. What with having such a long and varied life...” She looks up at him as he pours her more wine.

“A couple here and there up my sleeve...” He offers with mirth as he returns to his seat.

He could tell her about seeing the magic unfurling of the renaissance in Florence the 1500’s. The art the muses. He could regale to her the true bloody carnage of the crusades in the Middle East the so called ‘Holy Land.’ He could explain to her what Paris and Versailles was like in 1720. The frippery and the aristocracy. The crass callous nature of French royalty. Powered wigs black rotten teeth and beauty spots. He’d lived through all those cosmetic fashionable fads.

“Immortality is useful if one wishes to see the world. I believe there is no corner of it I haven’t glimpsed.” He tells.

“A soldier and a proverbial wanderer.” She adds in wonder. “You’ve seen the whole globe. I’ve only ever been shut into this tiny corner of it.” She tells.

“You regret that?” He asks.

“In some ways. I know not one person who has ever gone to their grave saying that they should have travelled less. I don’t want to be that person. Aching for experiences and a having a sore soul-full of remorse when my time finally does come.” She admits.

“Imminent marriage to the egregious Sergeant Hux suddenly seems abhorrent in more than a few ways?” He seeks.

“In every way.” Iris insists. Drinking her wine. But she couldn’t help it. It was what had to be done. No matter how much she wishes to undo it.

The dining room doors clatter open at the far end. A whole bevy of servants in Hellford’s crimson livery come in. Carrying trays and silver dishes laden with food. Iris can smell the delicious concoctions even from up where she is.

Mrs Jones directs her busy worker bees. They serve the elegant dinner right down the far end. Near the fire. At Kylo’s insistence. The table groans with food before long. A leg of roasted ham. A roasted saddle of beef. A mound of golden potatoes. A whole terrine of steaming white chicken soup, another of mutton stew. Creamed celery and fried cabbage and sprouts with chestnuts. Buttered asparagus and every fine dish she could ever think.

She sits opposite Kylo as the foot man carved them both chunks off the roasted meats. Along with half a roasted capon each. She likes the indulgence of it. And the meat is well cooked. The beef still drips ichor and the ham is sweetly succulent. Everything is immaculate. The footman pours them more wine and they helped themselves to the banquet of food.

Kylo doesn’t indulge much in the feast. She observed he mostly had the bleeding meats and the wine.

She feels over warm by the time they retire to the fireside once more. Many glasses of wine, aswell as indulging in soup and asparagus and roasted meats of all varieties, the dinner leaves her feeling stuffed full. Her stomach clogged with meat and sloshing with Bordeaux.

She declines another glass when they take to the seats once more. Dabs at her brow. Her headache is pumping furiously behind her temples again. Her throat is cracking dry. Nothing appears to ease it. She’d eaten the sugary sweet peaches and crisp snap apples off the fruit platter set on the table but now her mouth is dry as ash.

“The madness of the weather isn’t persisting, so I see.” She comments as the furious storm rattled the windows forcefully. She would be best to stay the night. As he predicted. He’s loathing the idea of sending her and his staff and driver out accompanying the coach in the severest weather like this.

Kylo peers across at her. Her breath seemed a little short. Her words seemed like enormous effort for her. And she’d seemed reserved at dinner. Eating slowly as if she had no appetite.

“I wager it will pass soon enough. Might see out the night.” He comments. Taking a sip of his own drink. Feeling the scarlet velvet of it sit on his tongue.

Her head is so full of agony. She can barely summon the energy to speak. She pushes herself up out the chair by the arms. Her bones suddenly grate with white-hot pain.

“Please forgive me- I.” She starts. Gasping for breath. She shuts her eyes and Kylo watches her try to compose herself.

“I think I may need to retire to-“ She doesn’t get the opportunity to finish her sentence. She swallows and then she just falls. Crumpled like a wilting flower.

Kylo is there to catch her. He stood the second she started waning. He falls onto his knees and captures her in his arms.

“Dove?” He seeks. Stroking hair out her face. Her neck is stretched back, face pale and dewy with sweat. Eyes ashen grey and bright. Hooded eyes bright with pyrexia. She’s weak. The rain caught her in worse ways than he outwardly supposed.

The chill must’ve settled on her lungs.

He cups his cool fingers to her brow. She’s hot. Terribly hot. _A fever._ This was grave. Grave indeed.

He turns and yells for Mrs Jones to send for the doctor. He turns back to Iris. Watches the beads of sweat wriggle down her forehead. Her dry lips crack open and she’s trying to apologise again.

He cups the back of her neck. Face tugged into worry. “I’ve still got you.” He promises.

His distress starting to build. Mounting onto his sadness. He never prayed. Gods hold no faith for him anymore. But he prayed in this moment for her.

He truly did. And he prayed so hard his hands shook.

~


	13. Delirium

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some gory details in this chapter; I wouldn’t like to shock anyone ❣️

Kylo was losing his mind.

It’s been known to happen to vampires of certain ages. Possibly ones even older than him, if any such do exist. Alive so long they start to rot and fester in their own bodies.

Brains blown and shattered apart from all the violence of things they’d done. Drifting and flaking apart like much too dried clay. The horror of the acts some vampires committed to feed. Not everyone could face or stomach it for so long. Drove them cackling into the worst sort of madness.

He’s seen men fall apart too. Mortal men. He’s seen entire armies and countries of men perish. Losing their heads to the last breath, infected with illness, or pox or the plague.

Deformed and rotting away already, before death had even come to them. Life clung on to them like some leeching disease. Decaying their bodies before their spirit had left their flesh.

He’d seen scores of roguish men who’d dallied with pox ridden girls. Perishing with no control nor use of their bodies and no eyesight to help them. He’d seen many many men succumb to it for some cheap penny’s worth of indulgence with some infested whore up against a tavern or brothel wall. Those men end up as dribbling and demented fools. Turned into deformed madmen.

It was hell. It was as close to any hell as he’d seen. The Black Death. He can remember that aswell. That rot.

How it bittered the air of every rust red Italian street. He’d been in Italy, in when it first struck. The hacking wet of sloppy coughs until blood comes frothing up.

Bloated bodies of peasants - men, women, children and infants - swelled green with festering flesh, dumped in the river, clogging up the Arno. Crows pecking at the bobbing corpses, ripping off flesh and eyeballs like wet peeling paper.

So many bodies-

Worse than ever, Kylo remembers the stench of plague. Rotting meat writhing with maggots, but candied with something of the human flesh, somehow. He’ll remember it for eternity. That cursed stench of putrefaction cloying the rivers and streets. It would stay seared into him for all his time still to come.

He recalls how some walled themselves into their own homes. They stayed inside to fester. Or drink themselves to death. Or pray. The illness took all of them before too long - faith or no faith. He could hear the wails of the nearly dead bleed through the thick red walls.

Blackened fingers, the fever and the boils, the salty sweat of rot and the reeking decay of death in every house. Everything the sick body excreted, be it sweat, spittle or breath, exuded an overpowering stench that he will never forget.   
  
  


Whole towns emptied. Abandoned. Their population now lay rotting in the swallowing of the soil. 

The doctore de la peste roamed the streets with their unseeing round glassy-eyes. In their beaks packed with sweet dried roses, mint leaf and carnation petals. The sickle of it trailed behind them like smoke cutting through the gloom. The ripe perfumery of plague.

By the end. The river was overrun with corpses. Couldn’t see the water for the rotting swill of flesh and bones. Rats scampering over them feeding. Gnawing. Birds plucking out what they liked to feed on.

It’s enough of a sight to make a man want to put out his own eyes with a red hot poker after seeing such illness, pestilence and misery.

It’s happening to him right as of now; in fact. Losing his mind. He’s certain.

They could mark this, 1816, as the year that he relaxed his firm hold on his sanity. It only took a thousand and twenty seven years.

It only took the sight of his sweet dove, in his bed, writhing and sweating with fever. Delirious and dangerously ill.

She collapsed after dinner and he swept her upstairs right away. Mrs Jones sent a note for the local doctor. Sent their bravest rider out on Erland, into the storm by the safest road. Jomar fetches her a cold cloth from the anteroom. Kylo can’t leave her side. He _won’t_.

He sits on the bed and watches over her diligently. When Jomar returns with a bowl of icy cold water, stands it on the bedside and wrings out the cloth. Kylo takes it from his offered hand without even casting an eye in his direction. He takes the sopping linen and pastes it across her clammy brow.

She’s splayed back in his bed, weak and insensate. To hell with liberties. He took the gown and shawl off her himself, and bundled the white cotton and red velvet sheets over her. She sank back onto his pillows. Sprawled limp.

Her lovely pale face sheened in sweat. Whole body shivering and her breathing was shallow. Brow creased and wrinkled up in pain.

Kylo’s sitting near. Pulling sticky strands of hair off her cheeks. Hating the sight of her like this. He’s banked the fire and had extra blankets put on the bed. But he’s unsure. He’s never sat at a sick bed for a mortal before. Well- not like this. He’s attended a death bed. But here? He doesn’t know what to do. How to act.

Her eyes are open but she doesn’t see him. He’s certain she can’t see him or anyone else in the room. She’s dazed. Lost to sense.

And he’s frantic. He’s mopping her brow but he doesn’t know what good that might do. She keeps twisting her head away from him. Fingers twining into the sheets, fisting them in her hands. Gasping and shuddering breath. Her chest is moving up and down so fast it hurts him to see this.

Mrs Jones timidly knocks on his bedchamber door. Kylo’s voice is strained when he answers the knock. She comes in. Her face pinched and the very sight of it hurts Kylo’s nonexistent heart.

“The doctor can’t attend her, my Lord. He’s trapped a county over delivering a baby.” She says breathless and pink from running up the stairs. Her skirts still picked up in her hands.

That was Kylo’s last hope. He dismisses her with a curt nod. Not ill tempered at her news. Merely overshadowed by this whole room. All this grave pressing silence and illness.

The very air in here feels tense. Made dry and hot by the fire. Stale with human exertion. And Still. So still with anticipation and uncertainty.

Jomar returns with another icy bowl of water, a fresh cool cloth. Kylo reaches and swaps it for the clammy warm one. She groans and tries to twist away.

Kylo soothes her. “Dove. It’s alright it’s alright.” He hushes her as she fidgets and tosses around. Knees tugging under the blankets. Hands still fisting in the sheets. She’s whining. She’s pleading with him. The hysteria has gripped its nasty hold tight.

“No... no. Ugh. Please. No.” She gasps. Head looming far back. Neck stretched out. Dewy, and by the darkened light of his room, her long supple neck and throat is now shimmering amber. Kylo’s hand take the cloth away and she sighs a lungful of a groan in response.

“She’s not talking to you My Lord.” Jomar insists. “It is the fever.” He assures Kylo.

His butler is now washing his hands in the water jug across on the dresser. Scrubbing soap and his nails with a harsh scratching brush that sizzles at his skin. He dunks his hands under the cloudy milk of the water and washes away the soap suds.

“What do I do?” Kylo’s pleading to them both. To Jomar and Mrs Jones. He looks like a little dark haired boy. An infant. Helpless and terrified.

Sat there, teetering on the edge of his bed, starry silver tears in his eyes. It might be the only time they’ve seen him truly weak or scared. Wracked with agony with something even _he_ can’t control.

Powerless to help the woman he loves.

Mrs Jones knows of that look. She sees the russet sparkle in his Lordships eyes. And it aches her. Sees the pain in his creased brow and displayed in the openness of his face. He is used to having power over so many things - this is not part of his influence. It does not share in being intimidated by him as most things and people usually do.

This vampires one weakness; terror for the frailty of mortality. That she could and might slip away to a place beyond his mighty reach.

Jomar crosses back to the bed, takes her wrist and feels for her pulse. His clever kind hands were cool on her feverish skin. Still she shivers in his grasp. He fixes his gaze downwards as he holds her frail arm. Returning it gently to her side when he’s done.

“Her heart rate is very fast.” He says with veiled emphasis. He then leans up and peers over her face, gently cupping it to see her eyes. “Her eyes are unfixed also.”

“I think it may be an affliction on her lungs. A chill caught from the rainstorm.” He suggests to Kylo.

“How do we treat her?” Kylo’s demanding with every note of his voice laced with hope.

Jomar shares an anxious look with Mrs Jones. “We don’t. Your lordship.” Jomar tells him gravely.

“We can only wait now for the fever to break. But we can do everything within our power to make her comfortable.” He insists to his Master and friend. Laying a kind hand on his shoulder.

Lord Ren looks up at him. Lost in his gaze. His silver bangle catches the light. A darting glimmer. Like a silver scaled fish swimming in dark inky waters. His butlers hope and goodness always shone great through the darkest of times.

Jomars bronzed eyes melt for him like crushing gold honey and warm cocoa. Tries to bolster him kindly for this devastating news.

“Is there truly nothing I can do?” Kylo chokes out. His voice hadn’t the bravery to rise beyond a whisper. He just had to watch her suffer like this? Twisting and delirious and unconscious with fever.

“I’m afraid so M’lord. In the meantime-“ Mrs Jones says. Crossing the wide dark room to the window. Batting away the crimson drapes. The battle axe she was is on the warpath. She’ll see this right. Kylo wouldn’t trust anyone else.

“We might try to keep her cool. Fever burns you up something wicked. So I won’t have her stifled. Loose blankets are best. And we are to mop her brow and her neck every hour. On the hour.” She commands. Jomar nods in agreement.

“I’ll see to some laudanum for her relief, from the medicine cupboard.” He insists. Bowing his head to Kylo before slipping away.

Off out the door. Picks up the lit candle holder in his hand from the side. The long ivory taper of it flickers a warm marmalade in the dark of his Lordships crimson room. Kylo watches the glow of it, and him, disappear down the dark hall. Swallowed up into the blackness of the house.

The treads of his boots crushed silent and dead on the rug in the corridor. The hazy fog of champagne yellow coated the walls of Hellford like thick gold dust. Shining off every polished wood door and dark floorboard. Grows fainter and fainter as he moves away.

Kylo turns back to his dove. Takes the cloth away. Re-wets it. Puts it back on her brow. He takes it away again once the cool is gone. Replaces the cloth with his own cold hand. All of his fingers dwarfing most of her head. He slips around and cups the nape of her neck and she rolls her solid head onto the arch of his arm.

She’s so warm it almost burns his hand. His chest aches to feel her that way.

She protests at the cold. “Leave me.” She sobs. “Leave me alone...” She cries. Eyes shut. Denying him the alluring cloudy grey gaze of those eyes he admires so much.

“I will do no such thing...” Kylo says lowly. Stroking wet tamped hair off her forehead. Looking at her flushed cheeks which burn hot. He presses the back of his hand to them. To soothe them. The crinkle in her brow lessens a little at his icy touch. The only time his coldness has ever come in handy.

Mrs Jones grabs the bowl of water from next to him but before she scurries downstairs to replace it she offers. “Your Lordship, I can send for a maid to sit with her. If you need some rest.”

“I will stay.” Kylo presses. “I won’t leave her side until this wretched thing breaks.” He insists with stony determination.

He looks back to Iris. Cupping her cheek in his hand. Watching her breathing pant rapid. She leans into his touch.

With no clear action before him, other than to comfort her. His mind, denied of a task, emptied of all things, now fear began to fill it.

Mrs Jones says nothing. But she gives him a trembling look of affection that attempts at bolstering him. She takes the bowl and she too pads softly out the room. The creaking whine of the door being softly shut was the final announcement to their being availed of company.

Kylo turns back to her. A terrible weight squeezing down on his chest. He’s sat at a fair number of deathbeds in his life. He’d watched some human friends fade away. But that was certain. War or disease took them from him.

This is not certain and it’s killing him all over again.

It’s that night on the battefield in the snow again and again again. Draegan finding him. Coming across Kylo as he lay dying. The burning dripping searing blood leaking down his side. His wound was by the abdomen. The worst way to die. It could take days. The white hot agony searing his bones in acid all over again. Scarlet snow. Scarlet wet snow everywhere.

He can remember cool slender fingers cupping his neck. The whisper across his cheek like a kiss of the icy north wind. “ _You know you will not survive this.”_ He explained. Unsticking Kylo’s leather gloved hand from the wound that ran along the entire side of his stomach. Silver eyes, like precious moonstones, looking at the blood laying black and thick on his palm.

To the very last. Kylo fought like a warrior. When he often had resolved, as a Viking soldier, of pondering his own death. He had envisioned a glorious end. Sword in hand cutting down his enemies until his very last breath.

He never imagined in his wildest dream that death would smile handsomely at him first. Never believed he’d be side by side with the devil - and that he would love him with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Never thought he’d love again - until he laid eyes on this beautiful creature. He lusted for her first of all. That instant carnal attraction. But that had masked how she truly made Kylo’s soulless body ache to love her.

She brought him to his knees. And now he’s choking on his grief.

“Please don’t leave me, Little Dove.” He begs in a whisper as she writhes and sweats into his bedsheets. Gasping and dulled.

“Don’t go to the one place I can’t follow.” He begs. Laying his big hand over where hers was limp and stretched out atop the velvet covers. His hand dwarfed hers utterly. But his touch was so gentle. Unsure.

“I told you if anything happened to you. It would kill me.” He says. Looking at her earnest face. So dewy and flushed.

“I meant my words. Iris, If I have to spend an eternity without loving you then, I-“ His throat claws up. Suffocating his words. He shakes his head.

He brings her limp arm up. Back of her clammy hand pressed to his mouth. Nuzzles a kiss to her skin. Tastes the salt of her sweat. Tastes her agony. He’s certain it reflects his own.

“I won’t leave you.” He vows solemnly. A silky whisper that he speaks into her skin. He always takes his vows seriously.

Treads rattle louder in the hallway. Coming back to the room. Jomar enters again with the bottle of laudanum and a spoon to hand.

Kylo will be the one to feed it to her. He gently cups her face and slips the silver spoon to her lips. An oddly intimate act. He feeds the opiate into her mouth, she twists her head and some of it runs down her chin. Kylo wipes it away with the cloth. Taking up the task of the lowliest maid. Seeing so tenderly to her in her illness.

He’s calmed a little by the fact of the laudanum taking away any pain she might be feeling. Her breathing settles. As does his worry.

He retires to the chair by the fireside across the room. The same deep wine red velvet as covers his bed. He pulls it close to the end of his huge four postered bed. Drapes hanging heavy down all four mahogany posts. Protecting the pale infirm form of her within. He’ll watch over her from his bedside. Cradled in the comfort of the chair.

Some ineffectual matronly mama of the ton may argue that this was most improper. A single man watching over the bedside of an unmarried girl. Worst still- an unmarried girl on the brink of an engagement.

Kylo snorts to himself. Wondering if the deuced snotty boy of a Sergeant would even care that his intended was gravely ill. Probably only cared that she had fallen ill in Kylo’s manor.

It didn’t matter that she was unconscious and insensate. She was in the very room with a man who compromised her honour, and Hux’s. Making a fool of him. In in Lord Ren’s very own bed, no less.

Well. Not that either of them were in any fit state to be compromising the hell out of each other. But he doubts strict society will see it that way. This was enough impropriety just being within touching distance.

One thing that does prevail upon him a tiny shred of bright happiness in all this darkness. Is the fact that he knows how desperately fuming this whole situation would make Iris’s mother.

Him protecting her. Rescuing her. Keeping her safe. He’s sure the old harpy would be frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog knowing where her daughter was. She’d likely spout out nastiness, how it was all a concoction for the dashing dark Lord Ren to seduce and spoil her eldest daughter. To ruin their hope of an advantageous marriage.

Little did that termagant know, but it was far too late for that.

Iris was worked her sweet steady way under his skin from every outing they’ve shared. Every look across a crowded ballroom. Every touch of their hands, gloved or not. Their dance. Their kiss. It was the inferno that brought their affection and regard for each other to a fever pitch.

She trembles whenever he comes close. When their eyes meet he always feels the delighted shiver that runs the full length of her spine. The blush that prettily decorates her cheeks. Finer than any jewellery he could bestow on her gorgeous body.

Funny how such a thing as her blush made him think of so many things.

It made him want to whisk her away in the dead of night. Back to Bavaria. Install her there as the Lady of his castle. Sharing his land. Sharing his title. Lady Ren. He’d have her dresses tailored by the finest Dressmaker in Bavaria.

Dust off the family jewels and then bedeck her in them. Head to toe. Nothing less would do for her. She’s suffered such a life of penury and scraping together to make her as bait to men for marriage. He’d see to ending that sad facet of her life. He’d let her choose what she wears. Whether or not she had to pay calls or deliver baskets to the infirm.

He’d let her lounge in a boudoir parlour, reading books, and accomplish nothing in her day apart from having a sumptuous oiled bath if she so desires. He just wants to see her happy.

He’d open the whole castle for her to explore room after room. Every tapestry. Every oil painting and marble statue. Every suit of armour he’d fought in over the years. Stood proud and polished silver on display. All of it he’d let her have.

How he misses it... his home. Ranlor Castle.

He misses the way the castle feels to step into. The scent of it. The edifying old thick stone halls of musty brick and how the smell of green and pine like the forest surrounding it, seeps in every window. Hanging upon the very air.

He misses the warmth of the fur pelts on his bed on a stormy night. The sky flurrying with snow, wind howling at tiny lead crossed windows. He was so used to hearing the wolves cry out for the moon in the woods at night, as he fell asleep in his big soft bed. Missed the way flame and shadow danced up the thick exposed golden-bricked walls. It lulls him to sleep.

The locals rightly call Ranlor the ‘devils rock.’ A dark superstition has long lingered over the land ever since Kylo had been in residence there.

Named because of the way the - many - turrets either end of the castle rear out the landscape like two sharp pale fangs. Looking over all the local villages and tenants. The shadows of those turrets reach far and wide. Everything is eclipsed in it’s shade. Grisly things were said to happen too, in his woodlands. Strong men go missing and not even so much as their bare bones are ever recovered.

Local folk legend blindly believes when the moon is full, that devils roam the woods. Black wolves turn into foul hungry demons with claws, ready to hunt upon the flesh of men. When the moon is its full eye of pearl in the sky, people are warned to stay off the forest. And stick to their homes. Bolt the doors and draw the shutters. Cower in their beds and listen to the wolves howls rise faintly over the snowy horizon. Piercing through the snow.

Kylo’s work providing for his lands and Ranlor’s tenants so ably puts shame to most of the rumours.

He is a generous Lord and master of the lands. Nothing is beyond his notice. He holds a ball for the local villages every year, near Yuletide season. Amidst the bitter winter. The staff bring in great log garlands made from the holly in the forest to decorate the hall. They serve brandy and punch and Kylo mixes among everyone to see how their year has been as his tenants.

If families struggle, too many mouths to feed. He absolves their rent. Ensures they are kept stocked with food from the castles own kitchen to tide them over- He has no need for it after all. His servants eat handsomely too, Kylo makes sure of that.

If bouts of illness flourish among his tenants and among those less fortunate than him, he puts up the money for the doctors bills. He takes care of his own. Even if they are not his kin. They are under his protection on his territory.

He is remarked on being a very gallant and fair man. No one on his land would dare observe that he was frightening and cruel.

Only if he is gotten on the wrong side of that is. If poachers steal from his lands and steal the food supplies belonging to his people. Or if he sees any drunken men take advantage where they shouldn’t with a passing maiden, outside the taverns. If a violent and ill tempered brute of a man who drinks his families wage away, so much as dares to raise a hand to his suffering wife or children- then does Kylo reveals his nasty side.

He’s sure there are still gossips that believe the superstition of his home. In local taverns at night over pitchers of ale, some men lean in, to whisper and wonder and gossip if he is entirely as human as he seems.

He rarely eats. Never drinks to excess. Had never taken a wife and he doesn’t dally with whores. He stalks the forest alone most nights. They sometimes remarked that he was not human. There was little humanity about him. But they never suspected for a moment that the bloodthirsty demon unleashed by the full moon, was in fact him.

The reason some of the bones of missing men were never found? Because Kylo drains them of the blood and leaves the drained corpse for the hungry wolves to tear apart.

Kylo ruminates on memories of home as he watches the firelight kiss across her pale form on the bed. Her breathing still shallow.

“I’d so much like for you to see Ranlor. Little dove. You’d adore it.” He says. Speaking to her as if she were awake to hear him.

He tells her about the forest. About the bitter winter gales that blow through. And how it thaws so prettily in spring. Woods full of blue hyacinths and pink scented stocks. Sugary and sickly perfume of them in the warm pine of sun-baked air.

He tells her how she’d like the wildflowers and the baby roe deers and the lake when it’s warm enough to swim in. To dip into the fathomless sapphire ink of water. The graceful swans that dance across the blue waters surface.

He tells her she’d like the local life. Much like here, people were humble and simple. Salt of the earth. People who make no pretence to be more than they are. How refreshing he finds that compared to all the Janus faced civility. Velvet draped over daggers, and dripping censure that falls from lord’s and ladies mouths, in a savage English country ballroom.

He describes the villages nearby. On the road to Ranlor. The tall narrow houses built of walnut timber and smothered in white paint. Closely set together on cobbled grey streets. Some of the neighbouring villages were walled cities also. Keeps from medieval times. Set high up in the rocks.

Quaint little hamlets were dotted along the Bavarian alps near his castle. He tells her of the nearest one to Ranlor.

Brimming with taverns boasting the most excellent beer and joints of game, roasted on a spit, a flagon and a hunk of meat for no more than a half a gold florin. Cafes and shops there were, a florist also. He recalls the waxy punchy-coloured tulips and how they always always always caught his attention in the window. The striking eye-catching scarlet of them. He likes seeing it, as he often rides past on Erland. Or in his rattling big coach.

There were coffee houses, bakeries and patisseries selling Austrian cakes and puddings. Butchers or other general stores selling the local cuisine of smoked or cured meats and sausages and cheeses.

The spectacular wares always for show in the haberdashers window. Great voluminous hats with sprouting great feathers and dripping trimmings galore. Her silly sisters, he fancied, would adore to see such fine frippery. And most of all, there in that precious little village that somehow has found a warm place in his heartless chest, there are always vendors with their braziers, hawking roasted or candied nuts around the town square.

He tells her how touched he was in her gesture of giving him a paper bag of roasted chestnuts, the day after they first met.

He admits something to her then; of how he doesn’t often indulge in human food. But those he _did_ eat. The buttery sweet burn of them reminded him of home. Lifting his nose to the bag to smell the smoky nutty scent sent him ricocheting right back to thoughts of that little Bavarian village. It touched him profoundly in more ways then he could say. She could barely spare the capital to buy them and she bestowed on him, such a gift.

She bought it with her last penny and that truly astounded him. He was a veritable stranger to her then. He is so much more than that now. She’s so much more to him. And him, to her.

Kylo will see out this lonely frightful night. He watches over her. Hopes the morning will bear better signs. Hopes that the tumultuous storm passes.

It dies well enough. By the pale pink of a wet lilac and gold dawn, shining over the windowpane and into his chamber. Shrouding his sickbed in rosy gold, she is unfortunately in much the same state. Unchanged. Not progressing nor worsened.

He sits and keeps a diligent eye on her. Had done all night. He requires little sleep. And so he talks to her. Mops her brow when she starts sweating again. Jomar and Mrs Jones flit in and out. Bringing provisions. And fresh cold water. More laudanum.  
  
  


Mrs Jones brought him a plate of roasted meats and a glass of wine. It went untouched. She takes it away without saying a word. Gives the scraps to the hounds.

Jomar checks on her every few hours. With his slight grasp of medical knowledge. They try sending for the doctor again. But he is still unavailable. Fixing broken bones from men caught up in last nights storm. Kylo curses the inflexible man every name under the sun.

He doesn’t even retire from her side to take luncheon. Mrs jones had tried to tempt him with a grilled chop at breakfast. And still he refused. Tempted him with roast capons and a carafe of wine now, and still he declined. He’d gone longer without food before in his time. It wouldn’t hurt him. Three years he’d once gone without indulging.

“You need to keep your strength up. My Lord. You’re no good to her if you starve away to skin and bone.” She chides as she carries out another bowl of water. Refreshing it.

“Hardly likely.” Kylo’s insisting. Tugging at the rumpled linen of his shirt.

Sleeves rolled and cuffed. Waistcoat he shrugged off some time in the night. Just in black braces, dull boots and dark breeches now. He’s sure he’ll be a malodorous wretch in need of a shave and wash. But he won’t leave her in this crisis. He won’t so much as go to splash cold water on his face. He’s not leaving this room.

Hellhounds with glowing red eyes and slobbering gnashing teeth, couldn’t drag him away.

Mrs Jones makes a move to put a matronly hand on her hip and chastise him some more. But there comes a groan from the bed.

Kylo leaps from his chair and bolts across to her. “Dove?”

He seeks for her hand. He listens to her breathe.

It was now a shallow drag accompanied by a slight rattling wheeze when she breathed. The affliction had spread to her lungs. And he knows the opium will have suppressed her lungs as a result.

A trickle of blood leaves her mouth and smears on the pillow. A wheezing hacking cough comes from her. It’s such a weak sound it hurts to hear it. He mops it away with the damp cloth. Smears at her pale cheek in its wake.

“Oh no. _God no_. Iris...” He seeks louder. Trying to see if she responds. She’s limp as ever. Lost to him. Blood leaking from her lips.

“Fetch Jomar.” He orders urgently to his housekeeper. She runs for the door and brings back the Butler. He checks her over and his face is grave.

“Your lordship. Her temperature is rising and I believe it appears as if the infection is worsening.” He says softly.

Kylo’s face falls. His throat bobs with worry.

He knows she’s strong. She can temper the foul spitting words of her mother. She can temper this. _She must._ Or he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

“Will she die?” Kylo asks outright. Face like steel. Eyes wet.

“I’m not a doctor. My Lord. I cannot say. But she needs a miracle to fight this affliction that’s taken hold. It looks like consumption.” He tells honestly.

Kylo nods. “I’ll call you both if you are needed again.” He dismisses them.

They file out the room with sorrowful faces. Such a sweet girl. And their Master is clearly so cut up by seeing her in such a state.

Kylo wraps his fingers around her hand.

“Fight it little dove.” He urges her. She was shivering earlier. But now she’s stilled. Sweating and clammy. Burning up more than ever. She was getting worse.

“ _Please_. Please fight. You’re so strong Iris. My god, you don’t know how strong...” He begs as he cups her hand and one hand cradles the side of her face.

“The first time I saw you, I saw your strength. Your resilience. You held your head high even though you didn’t want too. I felt your pain. I felt your back breaking under all that strain.”

Her head stays limp on the pillow. Eyes blind to anything. Shut in unrest. He wishes more than anything that there was something he could do to aid her before this got even worse.

She looks pallid. Ashen. More so than before. Sweating buckets and more blood leaks out her mouth. He wipes it away with the fresh handkerchief Jones left by the bed. He looks down in his hand and sees the sticky red staining the white cloth.

Like a bloodied paw print in the snow. It doesn’t even call out to his hunger. He’s too beyond it. This is too perilous. Too serious to measure his animal instincts.

Blood.

The room grows cold. All warmth drops as if the sun had been snatched out the sky. Kylo feels the chill pinned along his skin as a ghost of a phantom breeze sweeps over him.

His cool blood turns to prickling ice. The candles on the bedside flicker, the fire wanes. He knows what comes next. He hasn’t felt this in centuries. He hears the voice, as crisp and as sharp as frost in his head. The voice like silver coins and honey dances into his ear. Notes as fine as a dark deep concerto.

“ _Your blood, My fierce one. Or have you forgotten. All life is in the blood.”_ Comes Draegan’s soothing mellow voice.

The tone that was like feather down and silk to listen to the way he crooned. Every part of his manner was charming. The deep of his sharp eyes was piercing. _Intoxicating_.

Kylo’s not been alongside mortals as Draegan had. He was a healer. Though he was a demon, he always conceded that there was no death without life. All life as such, is therefore to be treated as precious. Humans fascinated him. And he moved freely and happily among them. Whereas Kylo scorned most all of them.

He strides from the bed to his unused escritoire across the room. Situated by the window for light. Not that he had any letters to write or close acquaintances to send them too. He considered leaving notes for Iris but there’s always a risk his letters would be discovered. He’s got a stack of them all written - tied up with a grey silk ribbon and hidden away.

He rifles through his drawers until he finds it. A knife. A silver dagger with a weighted carved handle. He rounds the bed again, crosses to her and sits near her hip. He holds out his left hand and rips the knife across his index fingertip.

Crimson beads up. He holds his hand aloft and watches it drip. Looks back to Iris and gently cups her face.

“I know this won’t be pleasant. But it will help.” He tells. He doesn’t even feel the sting of pain. It’s nothing to him. Nothing to the pain of seeing her suffer like this.

He gently holds her cheeks and rubs his bloodied fingers across her dry lips. Smearing crimson onto her tongue. She frowns and tries to move her head away, mumbling in distress. But Kylo doesn’t relent until he’s sure his ichor coats her tongue. Slips silken down her throat.

He takes his hand away and rubs the blood from her mouth that spilled down her chin. Leaving her as pale as she was before. The rose of her cheeks still glares awfully bright.

He bunches the cloth around his hand. He’ll heal up in no time. He wishes he could say the same for her. Only time will tell...

He holds her hand. Strokes over her dainty little clammy knuckles. “Twice now he’s saved you.” He remarks to her.

“If I didn’t know him any better....” He sighs, trails off in his words. The very breath gets punched from him. To what end could Draegan be saving her? Whatever for?

One idea occurs - it’s because he’s felt all that she means to him.

That tears agony at him like animals claws tearing down his chest. Shredding flesh. When he thought how he turned his back on him, and scorned his love. And here he was, centuries later, calling out to keep her safe. To protect _her_.

Kylo lets himself feel shamed.

Ashamed for the ways he bypassed his feelings for Draegan, and let anger fill him so completely up instead. Now he’s met Iris? He understands what he put Draegan through when he left. Because she might leave him now, and he thinks he might just wither away to ash, to nothing, for agony of loving her so much. Unable to help her through this pain.

Though now, perhaps he’s given her the catalyst to help her fight what ails her. He can only wait. And pray.

He paces the room. Paces and then sits. And then he’s treading worn holes in the floorboards again.

Before he knows it, night falls again. He watches out the window as the sun bleeds into blue.

Night washes a filmy indigo over the landscape. Trees turn to dark gnawed fingers of branches. The grass shimmers with evening dew and the pond out front in view of his window, turns to gloopy blue ink.

He stands with his back to her. Surveying the view out the window. Arms folded behind his back. He’s listening to the fire crack and the wind groaning outside on the cold glass, splashing hard against the house. And suddenly she speaks. Gasps out. Cries out.

“So cold.”

He whips around fast. She’s twisting from side to side and he sees the fire sheen off her brow. She repeated herself “It’s so cold...” He hastens to the bedside and takes her hand again. “Iris?” He asks.

She’s still dazed. Still delirious. Twisting her head on the bed.

“Snow. And blood. Why is there....so much blood...” She frowns. Her face all contorted. Her palms knot her fingers into her pillow. She’s writhing again.

Kylo looks down at her. Puzzled.

~

Her reality had became quickly spliced with odd fevered dreams.

Snippets of actuality broke through the haze. She felt herself fall after she stood up from the armchair after their intimate dinner. She dropped but her body didn’t hit the floor. She’s moving again. And those lovely strong arms of his, are around her.

She’s burning. Was she on fire? That’s what it feels like. She’s dripping sweat and trying to claw at her dry throat. Loosen her strangling clothes. Get some blessed sweet cool air on her skin.

A cold chest she’s cradled into again. Widest muscled chest she’s ever beheld. And she’s moving. Her eyes are shut, it’s all dark, yet she feels weightless. Being carried.

Then it all goes soft. She’s laying on velvet as gentle hands guide away clothes from her body. She’s aching so much her bones ring with it.

She tries moving but she feels cemented. Every word she tries to croak is difficult. Making speech is like trying to let thick hot syrup drip off her sticky tongue.

There’s this pain in her lungs. A thousand knives stabbing in when her chest expands. Kind hands touch her arm and her head. Their warmth scorches her already blazing skin. She tries to wriggle away. But she’s too weak. Her body won’t comply to the requests of her mind.

There’s feather and down at her back. It crinkles and crumples, and she’s relieved the bed is so cool. Something bittersweet is dropped down her throat. Trickling down her melting tongue. She barely feels the rest. She drifts in and out.

And the thing is, she’s not entirely sure she’s alone. She hears voices. A voice. Dark, deep, like a granite walled cave.

She can’t feel much. But she feels cold thick fingers wrap around hers. She knows who those might belong too.

The fire in her blood doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wane. She feels like she’s drowning and she’s not even in the rain anymore. Prickles and knives and all manner of horrible sharp things stab at her chest. Spears, lances, thorns and needles.

It feels like her lungs rattle with poison and shards of broken glass. She wants to cough but it’s too much for the infirm state she’s in.

In between her swimming head and trying to crack open her heavy eyes. Between bleeding crimson and a blazing twitching flame she can make out very little.

Time and sensation are lost to her. But she feels how someone diligently holds her, cups her face, cool on her cheek, feeds her spoonfuls of water so she doesn’t dehydrate. Dribbled water and laudanum - spiced with honey and saffron to cut the bitterness - down her neck with a cold silver spoon perched on her lips.

The dreams are the worst. She dreams about rain. About rivers and heavy crushing things, tar, black and rotten, squirming on her chest. Crushing her.

Of fangs ripping pale flesh off bleeding necks, how that haunts her. Wine red blood and she’s laying in a sticky hot pool of it. Unable to move.

Foul black demons with claws and leathery black wings and red eyes, drooling maws with gnashing teeth rip at her nubile skin. She screams but no sound comes. They throw her screaming into hell and brimstone, and the flames lick higher around her.

She’s dying. She must be dying. She can see it. Lying under a chiffon veil draping her body. Dried white flowers, rustling and dead sweet, are placed on her chest. Hands crossed over her chest. A figure in hooded cloaked black looms over her.

She squirms. She tries to bat them away. Tries to twist out their reach of these monsters. She calls and begs them, but to no avail. Cold splashed on her again. On her brow and on the back of her neck. She sighs and gladly welcomes it.

A low melodic buzz murmurs in her ears like a thousand bees zipping and bobbing about her head. She can’t understand what it is. But it’s somehow a nice sound to listen too.

It causes a gentle hum to seep into her aching bones and calms her heavy head. It’s like a balm. Salve on a wound. She doesn’t realise that it’s Kylo talking to her.

When the fire in the hearth across the room crackled and spit sparks up the chimney, it felt like splits opened in her skin, forming like cracks in stone, and insects crawled out. Black scurrying beetles, She started itching at her arms. Clawing. But nothing was there.

The cold soothe of her harbinger of peace is there to hold her hands and stop her nails raking her flesh away.

More voices move around her. Tumbling around the air in the room. Cracking and snapping like zapping silver lightning and thunder. The mumbling grows in volume. Slithering along her spine. One of her arms feels like it’s been left in ice water - it’s where he’s holding and kissing her. Begging her to fight it. Pleading with her.

She’s so tired. So wrung out. She just wants all this pain and fevered madness to stop. She’s soaked through to the sheets and her skeleton grates with ringing hot agony whenever she dares to move. She’d cry if her brain would grant her that meagre request.

Her lungs have worsened. She knows it. Filled and clogged with dry sand, and salt. Sluggish and wet like a briny beach. It rattles when she breathes, and something she can’t name dribbled out her mouth. Drooling onto the pillow. She doesn’t know that it’s blood.

She only knows that she’d quite like to fall away to her fever dreams and never come back.

Iris so wants the lingering darkness to take her.

However, one tiny shred of her feels cheated; she would’ve so liked to kiss Lord Ren again. One last time. The nicest thing that’s ever happened to her. She’d have liked to have tasted his kiss and drown in his loving attentions just _one_ more time. Just one.

It didn’t seem like a lot to ask of fate. Seeing the crummy hand it had dealt her in her wretched little life, thus far.

Time passes. She’s not sure if it’s seconds, or minutes. For all she knows she may only have been lying insensate for an hour. Or it may have been days. Weeks. She can’t focus. She could have been lying stretched out there for Methuselah’s lifetime. She’s none the wiser.

Then something else happens, something unexpected. Something wet is pushed past her lips. Only it isn’t water. And it isn’t the bitter saffron alkaline of laudanum.

She doesn’t recognise this taste; it’s salty sweet. Hot metallic, and a blend of sour-saccharine burst. She doesn’t recognise it. It’s not unpleasant. But it’s not what she’d describe as palatable.

She tries to twist. But her head is thumping and those flames are curling at her toes again.

And then some distinctly odd things begin to happen. Even more odd than demon dreams or the bugs crawling out crevices in her skin.

Where she swallows, the substance dropped in her mouth starts rolling down her throat. Carving away the pain in its path.

Before long it reaches her swollen lungs. Slowly. One by one, each knife and needle, shard of glass, spear and lance is dragged out of her. Pulled away. Tugged out her pinching flesh. Relaxing her ribs.

Gradually, all her pain lessens. Stickiness in her lungs, grating of her shallow heavy bones. It all fades. Agony slowly dies like a starved candle flame.

The unknown liquid rolls through her like milk and crushed honeycomb. Ambrosia nectar. It tastes like gold. Like sunshine warming her bare skin after feeling nothing for months, but cutting winter frost.

Fever dreams start to come back in full force. And they feel more real than before.

She opens her eyes and there’s suddenly snow. It’s cold. It’s so very cold she’s shivering. Standing there, looking around a milky snow blotted forest.

The trees around her reach vast, thick and tall. Trunks wider than her body. She cranes her head and she can’t even judge the tops of them. It’s just foggy grey up above. Heavy snowfall closing in.

But all around her there are splotches of dark seeping in the snow. Dark jagged shapes lay misshapen in the thick thick icy drift.

She feels it all. The squishing shift of the powder beneath her feet. Cold little stings of flakes melt onto her cheeks and eyelashes. Turning to tears that rain dewdrops down her skin. Her breath spirits silver out her mouth.

There’s no stars up in heaven. No moon. Not tonight. Nothing to cast over this glum gloom and darkness.

Noises patter and clang in the distance. Metal scrapes and hollow clashes. She peers around her and that’s when she comes to realise what all those shapes are...

Bodies.

Laying dead and still in the snow. As far as her eye can see. Men lay broken and scattered across the forest floor. Clad in simple dark armour. All wearing the same crimson coat of arms: blood and death litters them. That is their uniform.

Crimson is still shimmering down the bark. Splashed there from the slash of swords across parts of anatomy she didn’t want to think about. She cannot imagine how her brain can conjure up such carnage. Such mayhem and suffering.

Seeing a thousand, or more, dead men, pulled and carved to pieces. Violently separated from limbs, or heads or legs. Bleeding into the snow. Slumped sat against trees or piled on each other. Some studded with arrows. Some not.

Splayed where they’ve fallen. Viscera exposed, stubby limbs chopped in half. Throat slit. Holes punched in their chests and bloodied organs tumbled out. Some men held it in their arms like dirty washing. It’s an awful thing to witness. Such savagery.

What kind of beast could cause this? Could leave men dying and dead in this horrific way?

She scans around. Unable to fathom it. These poor souls. Mouths gaping. Eyes wide and staring, unseeing, at the clouded heavens. Like sticky pearls shimmering in the dark. Death hadn’t been long in taking them. The blood leaving them is still warm. She can feel the blaze of it under her feet. Melting the snow.

She sees no movement in the trees. Save for the snow heading down from high above. Settling like natures own confetti on all these fallen soldiers. Weeping over them, yet nothing else can be done but show them to their graves.

Then she does make out something.

A tall, lean, and strong figure moves through the trees away from her. Strong trunks of long legs. Sinewed arms. Even in his dazzling armour. Slender. So slender and elegant for a man. Most men lumbered. This one practically glided.

Though he is scarcely standing out amongst them. Silver and white. Clad in brilliantly kept armour. The only thing that stands clear is the crimson splattered across this soldiers body. Gleaming down his silver armour. He comes to a standstill.

If he was the last man standing; she suddenly realises with horror _exactly_ what that means in odes to all the death surrounding them.

She moves slowly towards this destination. Somehow desperate for a look. In the dim, she steps carefully and slow over the slaughter of mangled bodies and crimson hot snow. He has his back to her. Now she can’t see his face.

She crosses this battlefield. Comes closer and closer. As if stalking a cautious stag.

He was devastating in his height. Lean but not a man to be mistaken as being powerless. A long bloodied sword drips from his left hand. Even in this suffocating slim darkness, the curtain of white hair spilling long down his back is entirely obvious. Like a silk curtain. It’s braided too. Twisted into intricate plaits. Fixed with silver cuffs and wound with jewellery.

There are silver coiled serpent decorations wound around some of his braids. They gleam in the night like far off stars. He moves as devastating as a supernova.

If his hair moves like silk, so does he. Movements so supple yet languid. Certain. A great degree of confidence.

He turns his head. She hopes to catch a glance of his profile. Wanting to see if his face is as handsome as his hair, or his impressive built frame.

She’s curious. Somehow this is familiar for her; this white haired stranger.

He turned only a fraction. Not enough for to show her anything. Not his face. Not his eyes. Though it seemed he was looking in her direction. She’s been caught.

She freezes entirely and a smooth voice dances like honey wine and satin across the butchered dead and the snow.

“ _Go back to him. Little spark. He’s waiting for you.... this isn’t how we meet.”_ He tells her.

She cannot contest. She can’t even fight. Or speak. White fog swallows her up. Clouds her eyes. The blood and the soldiers and the snow falls away. Like she’s being dropped out of a white haze and sent tumbling down to mushy blackness. Spat out of heaven.

She falls. Jolts. Her heart leaps in her chest as adrenaline spikes through her body. She gasps...

And then, miraculously, she finally wakes.

~

She stumbles back to life with a rattling gasp. Kylo didn’t even hear it. It was nearly ten at night. He’s sat by the fire in his bedchamber, watching the logs within crackle and sinking and burning to amber and ash. Unaware that she’d opened her eyes until;

“Kylo?” Comes a weak little voice from the bed. Her voice.

He stands and turns so fast his head swims. “Dove?”

He strides so quick for the bed it makes her dizzy. He frets about stupid things, like the fact he hasn’t washed and shaved. He’s been too occupied in his avowed duty of sitting and watching over her sickbed.

He kneels by her side. Happily cups the cheek closest to him. Her eyes are clear, hooded, but clear. No longer shimmering bright with fever. And her cheeks have calmed. Less glaring red heat, now just a kiss of pink.

He places his knuckles on her forehead and had never been more relieved to feel her cooled. She shuts her eyes and smiles. Appreciating his touch. Savouring it.

“My god. I thought I’d lose you.” He insists quietly when she opens her eyes again. He takes her dear sweet hand and kisses it.

She takes a lot of energy to swallow and unsticks her dry cracked lips to answer him. Smiling. “Might I trouble you for some water?” She croaks. Her voice a strained crackle bleeding out her throat.

He pours it himself. Hands it to her. Helps her sit up a little and tip the glass to her parched rosebud lips. She takes dainty gulps of it. Drains the glass and has enough. It’s not overly cool, but Iris swears it’s the best thing she’s ever drunk.

He mops her brow again when she’s finished. Wipes the wet coils of hair away off her brow. It feels awfully nice and even though it’s shockingly intimate. She relaxes back onto the damp pillows and lets him comfort her.

“How long was I?-” She seeks.

“Two days, little dove.” He tells her gently. Placing the linen cloth down where it belongs. She swallows again. Refinding her lost voice. “It’s almost eleven at night.” He answers.

“I’m afraid I’ve been a dreadful imposition on you.” She starts. Picking nervously at the covers.

Kylo’s smiling again. Yesterday everything had been so grim he thought he’d never crack a grin ever again.

“Think nothing of it. I’m merely happy to see you so well recovered.” He says as he squeezes her hand tighter.

She casts her eyes for a second over the way his chin is flecked in onyx stubble. The way shadows linger under his eyes like heavy saddle bags. His hair doesn’t look unkempt. But his shirt is rumpled and faded cologne lingers around him. He’s been worried about her, than his appearance.

“You need rest and sustenance. Fevers leave you weak. So I’m told.” He reaches for the head of the bed and pulls the bell cord. The hidden crimson panel of fabric that called down to the kitchens.

“I wouldn’t turn down a cup of tea.” She sighs weakly. Beaming gently. No self respecting English woman would dare seek after anything else so fortifying.

“I imagine my housekeeper will furnish you with a banquet.” He suggests.

“How do you feel?” He seeks. It hasn’t escaped her notice his hand still twines through her own. It feels awfully nice. Cold. But not repulsive. She felt his touch even in her fevered state. It’s calming.

“Like I’ve been kicked by a horse.” She sleepily admits.

“Jomar said the affliction was on your lungs from the sound of your breathing. Do you need anything for pain?” He asks.

“I Thank you. I am well. I cannot deny the fever was.., draining. But, it was the vivid nature of the dreams I couldn’t stand. It all felt so, _real_.” She confesses.

“Delirium can be an odd beast.” Kylo agrees. He’s suffered blood delirium before. And that was like his own skin trying to willingly crawl off his own bones. It was beyond dreadful.

“The most odd one was... wandering through a forest. After a battle, I think it was. Horrible. Such death and slaughter. And then I saw this man through the trees. A tall man in silver armour...”

Kylo’s eyes are glistening dark. She carries on.

“He spoke out to me. I could never forget his voice it was-“ She searches for a word. “Melodic. Nearly. Utterly enchanting. And he had this hair, very long hair. It looked like white silk.” She explains.

“What did he say to you?” Kylo’s asking. Knowing full well what she saw.

“Told me that someone was waiting- And it... wasn’t how I would meet him?....” she declares. Finding the whole thing bizarre. Then again; what sense could be made out of perplexing dreams?

She looks bewildered. But Kylo knows the truth in it. He knows the various demons and reasons behind her channeled thoughts. His blood had taken its toll too.

“Dreams are confusing at the best of times.” He states in comfort. She nods in agreement. But she looks like she barely has the strength to hold up her own head.

She clasps his hand back. Her fingers and little strength she possessed, held onto him. “I’m very glad you were here.”

“I’m always there for you. Iris. And I always shall be.” He promises.

“What I did, scampering out into the rain like that. It was so foolish of me. And I don’t like to think of myself as acting like a fool.” She starts.

“I thought I was going to die it hurt so much. But I didn’t want to. Because I didn’t want to leave this earth - without kissing you one more time.” She explains.

“I know I shouldn’t say it. I shouldn’t even think it.” She swallows weakly.

Twines her fingers through his. Clutches onto him all the more. Showing him the depth of her affection that she had always smothered deep down. She doesn’t want to suffocate it anymore.

Kylo sees the wet of tears in her eyes.

“I’m very glad of your improprietous wishes. They well reflect my own.” He admits. Kissing the back of her hand. He wouldn’t throw himself and his passions upon her whilst she’s recovering in a sick bed. He’s not that much of a letch.

The door creaks open across his chamber and Jomar is the one to answer his summons. Kylo twists around where he is knelt. And when his butler sees his smile, and the calm of his expression. He hears his sigh all the way across from the door.

“Might Miss Ashton have a tray of tea and some of that broth Mrs Jones had cook prepare?” Kylo asks.

Jomars smile lightened up the whole room. “I shall fill the kettle _myself_. Your Lordship.” He beams. It makes Iris smile wide too.

“Thankyou. Mr Jomar. You’re very kind.” She rasps across to him. He nods a grateful smile.

“Ever your attentive servant. Miss. You got his Lordship to crack a smile for the first time since the dark ages. I feel like we ought lay roses at your feet.” He insists.

“Just the tea. For now.” Kylo reiterates.

“And might I ask you keep an eye on Miss Ashton whilst I retire to my washroom for a moment?” He informs.

“Yes of course. Your Lordship.” Jomar steps into the room and aside so Kylo may pass.

He squeezes her hand in comfort before he slips away. Off to go shave and wash himself and redress in a clean pressed shirt. And new breeches and small clothes. He felt quite rumpled in his current dress.

The kind butler lingers by the bed. Handing her some more water even though she hadn’t requested it. She needed it. He could tell.

“You all like his Lordship a great deal...” She comments.

Jomar can’t deny it.

“We love him. Miss. Though he may be stubborn and pigheaded sometimes. And most think him to be arrogant or savage. We are, all of us, so very proud to serve his house and his title.” He insists with not so much as a hint of false note to his tone.

“He depends on you a great deal. It’s nice to see a man and his butler on such friendly terms.” She states.

“We do make fun of one another. But it is enjoyable in its own way. He teases me. I rib him. And demand a payrise if he steps too far over the line. I have to remind him of his place...” He jokes in detriment. It draws a laugh from her.

“If I may speak candidly. Miss Ashton. And do censure me if it is above my place to say so; but he admires you a vast _vast_ deal. In a way I have seldom seen of him.” He openly admits.

Iris’ heart feels like it wants to burst. So crammed full of potent emotion. It made her chest glow warm.

“I could never censure anyone for such a admission. Mr Jomar.” She gives him a wobbly smile so full of love. Moved by his plea.

“And I feel you should also know he hasn’t left your side these past two days. Hasn’t left this room. He administered medicine. Water. All himself. He didn’t even take the time away to eat or bathe.”

Her eyes water. “So you see? He really is the most stubborn man. I doubt he’d have let that illness take you either.”

“Most stubborn.” She agrees. And she cries happily. Heart so bursting full at the seams, of love for him.

Seeing how much his staff admire him. How he’s surrounded and inundated by people he warmly regards. How respect from either party cuts both ways.

He’s the most honourable man she’s ever had the good fortune to meet. She can’t ever imagine how or why she had once considered Lord Ren a monster.

For her heart is quite sold to him.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do let me know your thots, my loves ❣️


	14. Ambush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s all hotting up now ❣️

All was eerily quiet when she was returned home. The front exterior of the house is so cold and still. As cloudy as the overcast sky behind it.

The rain had eaten away all the lingering frost and snow. Cold slush now took its place. When night falls again all the wet will sharpened back into frost. More snow will doubtless come in this stinging winter. She can sense the chowder thick clouds far off in the heavens shudder with the possibility of more.

Even the icy landscape was unaffected by wind or noise. Everything was silenced. Blotted out and muffled. The woods seemed eerily quiet.

Means she could hear where her heart was thudding all the more noisily where it cowered scared in her ribs.

She alighted from Lord Ren’s carriage, onto the gravel drive, sitting the door thereafter. Thanking Ramsey, the kind driver. When he cracked the whip to start the horses her whole being tensed. She flinched.

Her heart seized up with every crunching step on the gravel. She tried to clutch to her courage. Grit her teeth and prepare for the audible assaults soon to sting at her ears. As spewed words and vitriol will doubtless fall harsh from her mothers purse lipped mouth like stabbing hard hail.

Death by ten thousand blows of her sharp disapproving tongue.

Her whole body is roiling to head back into this house. She feels nauseas to consider stepping back into the foyer of her home. She knows there will only be nastiness and questions to welcome her into the enfold. Back into the waiting room of her life until marriage comes to claim her.

She’d far rather be back at one of the most handsome houses in the county. Sat fireside, in company with the most intriguing creature she’s ever met. Knowing Kylo as she does, he’d find that most diverting.

Iris hungers much more after the presence of a deadly hulking great vampire instead. Yet she cannot fathom or stand to embrace the company of her acerbic fork-tongued mother.

He’d laugh at that crippling irony, she’s sure. Kiss the back of her hand. His eyes would glitter like two discs of a far off starry night sky. Black and full of hidden knowledge and transient things.

The eyes that had completely seared her soul. Always had done. His smile had broken open her heart and scored his very name on her weak beating muscled thing. It flutters and lives for want of loving him - and yet she can’t. Everything in her situation and home life decrees otherwise.

She wants a man she cannot have. The pain of it presses upon her greatly.

She approaches the stubborn old warped wood of the front door. Steps up onto the wonky sunken stone porch. The faded white paint. Chipped and peeling in many places. Grains of the bare wood poke through.

She wonders what censure awaited on the other side of this old chunk of oak.

She raises a hand but her veins clog with cloying uncertainty. Halting. She gathers herself up before she knocks. Stood there shivering in her laundered coat and dress. Kylo had insisted on seeing to some new boots for her. Sadly, her old-beaten cracked leather things could not be salvaged. He sent out for new ones from Mr Grassby’s store. Finest in the county.

Now whenever she has warmed toes she’ll think of him. Fur lined dark leather boots with strong laces. She can’t thank him enough.

She tugs her old coat around herself. Not aware that Kylo would’ve had her an entire new coat and dress to go home in, if he wasn’t so sure of her protest. He let her be. But he so badly wants to see her spoiled. He so badly wants to be the man who does spoil her.

Her clean cotton skirts sway about her legs. How the redoubtable Mrs Jones had gotten the mud stains out of her clothing she’d not a clue - the woman used witchcraft as an aid she’s sure. In most things.

The broth she’d served Iris was of her own recipe, harping back to her days as a ladies maid. And, she proudly exclaimed, every ladies maid worth her very honour and credibility, knew how to make a restorative broth. Iris supped four bowls of it right down. It was utterly ambrosial.

Oddly, her spirits were lifted a little by thoughts of them. Of how they conveyed their kindness to her. She’s almost certain it stemmed from Kylo’s fondness for her too. And that is such a lovely thing to consider.

She thinks of Jomar. The slender tall poplar tree of a man. She thinks of his sour wit and his ready quips to his master. His cinnamon and warm honey and milk of a voice. The way each of his fine satin coats smell like cloves and sweet fruit and honey wine and _life_. The fine bright silk of his turban and his coat. The slash of silver on his right wrist. Always exotic and wryly comforting.

She thinks of Mrs Jones. The stout bodacious shaped woman. Accurate as a well turned clock. She had an efficient manner. Dark brittle russet hair shot through with bolts of fantastic silver. Always styled neat as a pin. She had a handsome mature face with ruddy cheeks and a pair of warm grey eyes that turned cold like harsh heavy gravestones if she was displeased with anyone. Hinting at her years of hierarchy in the household. Wrinkles by her eyes and mouth from her smiles. The best way to age, Iris thought.

She wore her strictly pressed uniform of soft black. With a set of keys latched to her waist. Orderly and strict in comparison to the colourful candour of Jomar. They worked well as a pair of contrasting servants. And she could see why Kylo loved them enormously. After three mere days at Hellford, she did too.

She recalls fondly waking up to the sight of Lord Ren in the armchair by the end of his bed. Leafing through the pages of a book as she slept. Keeping watch. The beast Keeping thorough guard of his Dove.

She watched him, through hooded bleary eyes. Sticky with sleep but she admires the way his big hands so carefully turned the delicate pages. The span of them dwarfing the little novel he so ably devoured.

She wondered how many books he had read in all his time on this earth.... she’d have to enquire one day. She wants to hear everything he’s seen. Every truth. Every historic story or tale he carries with him. She wants to devour this man’s rich juicy brimming life whereas hers seemed so flat and stuffy and grey.

She watches him in that tiny unaware moment. How he breathed. How quickly those savage eyes demolished the words of the page. How his lip quirked at the corner if he read something amusing or interesting. How his ink hair fell over his handsome brow. He didn’t sweep it back. He left it there.

After she’d slept off the symptoms. She wakes up drowsy, and he’s still there. At the end of the bed. Hasn’t moved. And then they just talk.

Interrupted by Jomar or Mrs Jones bringing them trays of excellent food or drink. Bowls of mutton stew dotted with onions, leeks and peas, or silky lobster bisque and warm buttery bread. A tea service with plates piled with fruitcakes or ginger baked biscuits.

She regained her appetites fairly quickly. Kylo comments on this. She fears it appears unfeminine. He ensures her he likes to see a woman with a healthy appetite. Most women of his acquaintance peck at their food like overstuffed starlings.  
  


She praises his cook as she eats through bed tray after bed tray of good restorative food, and his eyes glow with mirth.

It’s humbling. Peaceful.

She forgets that she’s an unmarried woman and he’s a single man of large fortune. Sat up there in that crimson velvety bed. Sheets pulled to her lap. Wrapped up in a nightgown and dressing robe. She must look a fright with barely combed hair and an ashen complexion from her affliction. He sat in the armchair opposite, and didn’t even see all the things she was fretting about. He just saw her. His beauty. His dove.

They just... conversed. And to Iris? It is the best evening of her life to date. She’s never smiled so much. She made him smile too. He laughed at her comments. That one evening with Lord Ren made her feel more cherished and treasured than in all her outings with the spoiled titian haired Sergeant.

She lets that thought and those memories keep her buoyant as she reaches for the door handle. But as she does she shrinks back, yelping in shock as the door is torn open from the other side.

The beaming face of Meg, their maid, greets her. There in her beige gown and white starched apron and cap. Her grin splits her face and she yanks the eldest Miss Ashton inside. Yammering on and on about something Iris’s ears can’t keep up with.

She grabs the back of her collar and spins her around, shrugging her out the coat. Still gabbing on about all she’d missed in her absence. Flora and Posy bought more ribbons. And a Posy bought an ugly bonnet to pull apart and make it up prettier. They’d not had much bother with the rain. And then she starts on asking how Iris is as she takes her bonnet and gloves off her. Snatched them away to hang them up.

Before Iris can fathom how or why, Meg is herding her toward the front parlour. Arm slung in hers, she steps her quickly across to the door. Opens it for her and almost elbows her inside. She stumbles gracelessly into the parlour. Not shocked to see her mother. Swathed in her Apple green muslin day dress. White diamond shawl around her arms.

She is surprised, however. To see Hux sat on the settee opposite her mama. Fully kitted out. Not in his uniform for once. But in a blue coat and a striped gold waistcoat. Bottle green breeches on his skinny legs, tucked into shining brown boots ending at his knees.

When she comes through the door he rises suddenly to attention. Hands tucking behind his back as he bows to her. In this pallid light his hair shone a brilliant red. Contrasting to the pale parlour. His eyes were emeralds and sapphires.

Iris can’t deny he’s a genial man. Red locks and dazzling piercing blue eyes. Curling ocean waves and blazing flames. And he is a beautiful man; were it a time before even meeting or knowing Lord Ren, she would of course comprehend the matter of his allurements.

But she’s been well and truly ensnared. Taken away heart and soul, by hair darker than a ravens plumage, and eyes so dark russet they nearly betrayed the starry sky.

She didn’t want blazing flames and ocean waves. She longed instead for onyx leather, silver steel and cloudy woodsmoke.

Mama seems pleased to see her. A sickly smile stains her lips. Iris’ heart consequently turns to stone. She expected a flurry of abuse and screeches. Instead she is offered this calm grin. It’s unsettling

She is dizzy with sickness that spreads through her. She sways on her feet. Steadies herself on the open door. Stomach squirming like maggots on rotten meat.

“Sergeant Hux...” She curtseys clumsily to him. Meg slams the door softly behind her. Iris blinks at the brute force of it. Jumping forwards a little. The sound of it rattled through the house and knocked through her brittle bones.

“Forgive me. I’d no idea you were in attendance.” Iris looks pointedly from him to Mama. Who grins wider at her eldest’s words.

“I hear you fell ill. Miss Ashton. I do hope you are well recovered.” Hux pipes up.

Standing with his hands folded behind him. Legs poker straight. Military stance infused into every grain of his etiquette. Even every ounce of his affection is quashed under it. Tamped down. His face betrays little emotion on seeing her. There is nothing but fond regard in his eyes.

“Thankyou. I am well. An affliction and a fever, caught from a rainstorm.” She explains. Knowing full well the huskiness of her faded voice supported her story.

“Lord Ren was so... kind. To offer you shelter at such a time.” Mama manages through a clenched jaw. Fussing with the corners of her shawl.

“He is very kind.” Iris defends. Mothers smile only grows all the more. Corners of her dagger grey eyes pinched with wrinkles.

“Let us not talk of that man now. We have far more important things to come to. The Sergeant wished for a moment alone with you.” Mama explains. Rising elegantly to her feet. Gliding in Iris’s direction toward the door.

Iris steps aside. But not before her mothers hand - talon - gripped her wrist and she leaned in under the guise of embracing her daughter. Something she has never done to any of her girls, or ever made any effort to do so.

“It’s so pleasing to have you home again. My dear.” She speaks as she leans in. Iris isn’t surprised that she then hisses under her breath.

“If you dare ruin this chance for us...” She snarls. Her breath lands hot on her cheek. The scent of violet perfume making Iris feel quite sick when mingled with the essence of abuse and the stinging grip on her arm.

Mother is all genial smiles again when she turns to quit the room. The door softly shutting in her wake is a delicate blotted sound.

But Iris is convinced there is some sort of tempest quaking her chest and heart. It pounds and rags the space between her lungs and shoots up her spine like a congreve rocket bursting and deafening in her blood.

She moves closer into the room. Hux stands stiffly but approaches her with timidly cautious steps. She stands with her hands folded in front of herself. He clears his throat to begin.

“I um. I spoke with your father this morning. All seems to be settled hereabouts. I won’t bother you with such details. It’s not for your knowledge...” He begins with a brief little smile. His manner decidedly offhanded.

Iris swallows. Suddenly her throat is clogged with cotton. Her mouth is as dry as a bucket of claggy sand. As if she’s swallowed great mouthfuls of it. She’s waiting for the fall of the axe.

She looks up into his face. He seems jittery. But then he’s reaching over and taking one of her hands to hold. His palms are smooth and uncalloused. She far prefers hands much bigger and with more life scarred on them than these lily white hands. He holds her fingers delicately.

And he sinks to take to one knee-

“I am not a man inundated with passion or words and thoughts of giddy romance. But I can promise you a steady home and a decent income.” He vows. Something tells Iris he would never break his word. She knew he was honest enough to see her comfortable in life.

But that’s the crux of the poison of doubt flushing in her belly - she doesn’t want to just be comfortable for the rest of her life.

“Iris Ashton. Would you do me the honour of granting me your hand in marriage?” He asks in that same loveless way. Producing a box from his great coat pocket.

A gold band with one near round diamond. Neat. Ordinary and unassuming.

She looks down at him. His eyes were clear and true. Expression so vulnerable and honest with her. Whatever else he was - rude, arrogant, pedantic and snotty - he was always atleast honest with her. Her temples strain as her brain flits and fogs with ten thousand flighty thoughts. They fidget and toss like a vicious tide breaking on rocks. Crashing and devastating.

She opens her mouth, and nothing but a choked sound comes out. She rifles every corner of her brain for thoughts or feelings. But she can find none. She can only find one conclusion- even though it shatters her heart into bleeding cold shards.

“Yes. I’d be delighted.” She rasps out. Hux didn’t notice how no light nor sparking joy shone off her grey eyes. Only the silver of tears.

Hand over her mouth because she cannot fully believe what she’s just done. Her eyes water and she suspects Hux now thinks her a very foolish fop of a chittish girl, indeed.

He takes that ordinary and characterless ring and slides it on her finger. It’s just pinching enough to fit. Her hand trembles and Hux takes it.

“There.” He smiles. Rising to his feet. Doesn’t make any move to embrace her. Or take her in his arms. It stings at her for some benign reason. Niggles at the back of her head. He was following the rules of propriety and suddenly she found an oddity in that.

“Our families will be thoroughly delighted. I feel.” He adds. She doesn’t tell him the sad irony of that admission. She swallows and looks down at the cold band of metal trapping her finger.

It felt like the parlour walls were closing in. Choking and clawing at her. Suffocating. Her blood felt ten degrees too hot. Roiling in her stupid foolish veins.

“I can safely vow I will always do the honourable thing by you.” He suddenly spouts out. “I ask you would do the same.”

“Sergeant-“ She begins. Pausing for breath.

“You may of course, call me Hux now. We are betrothed after all.” He points out. Smiling affably. Here began the journey of their affable little life.

She blinks. Stemming the sadness. “I could never presume to-“ Her words die slowly in her throat. Don’t even make it past her teeth.

“I may promise you I would never willingly dishonour or hurt anyone. Let alone my intended. I am many things. But spiteful is not among them.” She promises with a shaky smile. If he knew her better, he’d understand that.

He looks glad.

They are interrupted by the parlour door falling open and Mrs Ashton makes her entrance again. When she catches sight of their smiling faces and the ring glinting on Iris’s hand she swoops across, all charms and kisses, to wish them both joy.

She insists on a dinner party. Sends a Julia to tell cook to start preparing at once. And for Simpson to fetch the finest bottle of burgundy from the cellar. And sends out a rider from the farm with a missive for Hux’s parents to come and join them in a celebratory feast.

Posy and Flora come bouncing and screaming in to wish their congratulations and immediately ask about the wedding and their bridesmaid dresses. They twirl Iris in circles. Kiss her. Flutter with giggles and immature gleeful smiles. Mother, Hux, and her sisters all get lost in gabbling conversation. Asking questions about the estate, the land, his commission. They all get swept along and Iris is rather left out of it.

She barely feels when Hux scoops up and holds the hand closest to him. His grip firm yet gentle on hers.

She’s perfectly numb.

She sits on the settee next to a man she doesn’t and can never love, as her wedding is plotted around her. Carving around her like water. Her sisters excited whispers bubble and chirp around her ears like a flock of chaffinches.

She pasted on a smile. A false hollow one.

The hand he isn’t clutching sits dead and dull in her lap. She looks down at her palm where it rested in her skirts. Remarking to herself unfairly on the sudden ambush of his proposal.

She watches the ring glint off the amber fire, lit directly in the hearth to her left. She stares at her fingers for a moment. Transfixed. Occupied.

Seemed such an odd addition to her hand. An extension of her in diamonds and gold. And it didn’t feel right. It felt leaden. Devoid of love. Lacking- she’s been weighted and found wanting and that thought eats away at her.

She looks up into the doorway when her father comes in to wish her joy. Reticently stepping in the room. No one else pays him any sort of mind. They’re all conversing most animatedly. He catches his eldest daughters eye-

The most sad expression awaits her on his face. He looks haggard. As if this news has aged him in some newly impossible way.

Iris holds his look for a second. Gives him a wobbly smile. He looks mightily ashamed. And Iris realises it’s the first time she’s even seen her fathers eyes look so raw.

Red rimmed where he’s swiped away tears with the damp kerchief still in his right hand. He looks quickly from her over to Hux, and the message is more than clear.

She looks down into her lap. She has too. Her eyes sting with tears and her lip will tremble if she doesn’t. She can’t look at his sadness and not see her own pitiful state and woefulness reflected right back at her in his sea foam eyes.

Even he pulls on a mask. His smile grows when Hux stands to shake his hand. He looks as pleased as everybody else in the room. Wishes joy to the newlyweds. Kisses iris on the cheek and she feels the dampness on his skin where his sideburns scrape.

The dreary night wears on. Hux talks about something or other to Mama. Posy and Flora are haranguing the newly arrived Maratella with questions as to the estate. They’re all insensible and silly and they get on marvellously. And Iris listens to her sisters have the cheek to ask if they should get up a party to all of them go to Brighton in summer. As Iris is now newly engaged. She’s considered proper. She can chaperone them. Or they squeal she could have an engagement party with tea and fancy cream cakes to settle Iris at Hux’s ancestral seat.

Brendol is having a refill of wine poured by their maid. Not saying much of anything to anyone. Only some nonsense about how Iris had better bare his son a healthy string of grandsons. Who would all be soldiers like their father. Iris bites her tongue. Unhappy to think she’d go through the pain of having beloved and cherished children, only for him to sell them into battle as canon fodder.

“Excuse me. I must go change for dinner.” She smiles weakly. Hux nods. Lets her hand slither out of his. Barely looks at her as she moves off. Instead talks with her mother about a date to set the wedding. Sometime soon, he presses. As he is away in the autumn and he wants to be married, and Iris settled with child by then. Awfully grand that his goals didn’t seem to include her opinion at any turn.

Mama seems awfully excited. She doesn’t notice when Iris’s father catches her hand as she moves past his armchair. He holds it for a second and looks up at her. Doleful reproach in his eyes that spoke eloquently of his contrition.

He sighs slightly as his thumb rubs over the ring on her hand. He knows she won’t be happy. He knows how miserably she suffers all this matchmaking. He should have put a stop to it, but he was always overruled. He was a spectator watching it all unfold.

And now he has to sit here and watch the brightest spark that was his eldest, get shackled in matrimony to a man who will never grow to love her. It was clear that all Hux will ever love is his uniform and his Sergeancy. She deserves better. A better father, a better fiancé. He wishes he could give it to her.

He didn’t marry for love. He married for convenience. And his sweet girls are the only good things to come out of the loveless match to the snappish cruel woman that was his wife. Posy and Flora are perhaps silly and vapid. And Iris had more wit in her little toe, than his two younger girls had in their whole bodies altogether. But still he loves them dearly. All of them.

He’d die for his daughters merriment, and he could die of shame of this whole fetid situation, right here and now.

Now he was sat here, helpless, watching that same agony of a forced match, get thrusted upon his beautiful Iris. She will grow dull and be subjugated and oppressed by this man. She’s already losing that spark that used to live in her moonstone eyes. Drawing into herself and biting her tongue.

He wished, he wished beyond everything in his grasp, he wished so hard that his bones hurt. He prayed that he could open his mouth and say all this to her. But yet again. He must prevail upon his silence.

He squeezes her hand. Bolsters her with a little comfort. He swallows and gives her a smile. “Pray- t’is nothing. Forgive me. I forget what I...wanted to say.” He confesses gently to her.

When Iris slides noiselessly out the parlour door. Caroline’s eyes slice into her husband. He looks back at her with a dull look of anger on his weathered face. Forcing Iris to join with this snobbish boy and these outlandish and boastful people. He could very well hate her for it. Her unfeeling nature of it all. He’s never been more sure of his revulsion toward her.

Iris isn’t long changing and dinner is not far off either. She drifts back downstairs in a gown of emerald silk. Let’s Hux take her arm and lead her to the table, where they all sit down to a grand dinner. As grand as Westwell could boast of, anyhow.

One of Mrs Murphy’s best spreads; A boiled joint of ham, served with parsley sauce. A leg of mutton. Enough boiled or roasted potatoes to feed all of Hampshire. Jugged hare and creamed celery and Buttered carrots. And there’s plenty of juicy platters of rich darkly opulent fruits and syrup tarts for pudding. A slate of plums and grapes and pomegranates. Surrounding a cheese plate of Stilton, Brie, and cheddar.

Iris doesn’t manage more than a couple of mouthfuls. Even though the boiled ham with parsley sauce is her favourite dish. She doesn’t manage to swallow down more than a few meagre scraps of it. The wine and the conversation flows all around her. She cannot help but be introspective about this whole sordid thing.

Her throat is cloyed. Like scraping fire and glass shards when she tries to swallow anything. It does nothing to nourish the fathomless pit that’s formed in her stomach.

Everyone raises a crystal goblet of Bordeaux to the newlyweds health.

Maratella comments that Hux has caught himself a fine bride. Winking at Iris. Crowing of how beautiful her first grandchild will be of their combined colouring. And she apparently wants a bushel of them.

“It will be so cheering to have a house full of young infants again. Little ones to dote on. I do so adore them and I’m most looking forwards to it.” Maratella cooed. Aiming her words to Mrs Ashton. But letting her daughter-in-law hear them too.

Iris swallowed her wine with a thud. She can’t even appreciate the bouquet of it tonight. Her tongue is too sour. The wine tastes like bilious floral soap and compost.

She looks down in her lap, fiddles with her napkin. Forces herself to smile and choke down the sip of it even though Maratella and her insinuation and the suffocating image of a houseful of squalling titian haired infants makes her feel quite sick.

Hux makes no comment either. He merely carries on chewing his slices of roast mutton. Flora and Posy ask Iris a million questions each, in the span of ten minutes. She answers succinctly and completely ignores their requests for silken bridesmaids dresses and new slippers.

Iris’s eyes flicker over to her mother when Maratella enquires as to her recent fevered affliction at Hellford park. Mama does not hold back in her derisions regarding Lord Ren.

“I know not in what kind of uncultured society that man was raised. But he is so uncouth. And superior.” Mrs Ashton offers.

“I find his manners a little odd. Thank goodness the attachment is severed for good now.” Maratella says.

Mrs Ashton turns to get a helping of creamed celery. Iris gives her daggers across the table.

When their guests depart to leave, after supper and after a game of whist and snifters of port or sherry in the parlour. Iris stands there in the cold foyer as her intended pulls on his coat.

She nods her goodbyes to him and his family as Brendol barks at him from the coach to get a move on. Maratella waves a hand at her husbands fussing. Cooing that they should take all the time they liked to share a goodbye.

Hux bends and places a find kiss on her hand. “Goodnight. Future Mrs Armitage Hux.” He states with a pink blush constrasting to his shock of combed copper hair.

He smiles at her before he ducks out of the door and off into the night. She watches the bare moonlight shine off his hair and his lanky shoulders in his big greatcoat. Pearled light feathering off his red locks as the blue black night swallows him up.

She doesn’t stay to watch the carriage leave. She turns and morosely trudges up to her room. Asks Meg to bring her up a cup of tea as soon as cook could spare her. She can feel Mothers eyes pin into her back like two silver needles as she ascends the creaking dark sloped stairs.

“Iris...” She calls out. It takes every ounce of energy in her body not to turn around and snarl seven thousand cursing obscenities at her.

Ensnaring her with such a sudden proposal. Gloating smug glances at her all night. Iris couldn’t stand it.

“Yes mother?” She asks.

“We are all excessively happy about this news today. I hope you’ll do nothing senseless so as to jeopardise it. Hux is a steady good man. You should endeavour to deserve such a good example of a husband.” She reminds with pinched savagery in her tone.

‘ _Should I?’_ Iris remarks to herself.

“If you ruin such a good match. You will regret it. And no such other man may ever make an offer to you if you do.” She makes clear.

Words lingering just shy of a threat. She was much too cunning to have to threaten her eldest daughter. She speaks as if her words already make sense to Iris. As if she already had her agreement.

Iris stands still. She stares up into the darkness of the house ahead. “Goodnight mama.” She says flatly. Hiking her body up the remaining stairs.

She passes Posy and Floras room on the creaking landing. The slice of gold candlelight under the door eats at her skirts as she passes. Hears them giggling and hushing whispers to each other as they make ready for bed. The silly chits probably stole too many glasses of wine at dinner. She remembers a time when she used to join them. Sit on the end of their beds in her nightgown with her hair all plaited for bed. They’d talk - as sisters do - of silly things and gossip.

Until mama made her focus on more important things. Less sisterly affection. More concentration and focus on comportment. She sadly strokes a hand across their bedroom door. Smiles at the embroidered flower stitchings of their names pinned to the white painted door along with dried flowers. Scattered across like a meadow breeze tossing petals on the wind.

She wishes they knew how dear they were to her. Of course she calls them bugs. Or annoying pests. But she never, not once, went one day without loving her sisters for who they are. They can be acerbic like mother when gossip comes about and tongues start to wag. But they are ultimately kind hearted, affectionate and silly. She hears them giggle about the hideous bonnet Maratella wore tonight. It makes her smile and lifts her spirits for a second.

She pats the door silently and fondly before she moves off straight down the candle lit hall to her own room. She opens the whining door and looks around her meagre, half dark little room. The wall-to-wall flowery papered little cell that it was. Her waiting room until marriage came to claim her.

And come it had. On mighty swift wings thanks to her mother. She shuts her door and presses her back to it. Thuds her head back onto the wood. Let’s her true feelings come bubbling up to the surface for the first time all night.

She’s broken-hearted. Her pathetic heart feels like one of those great ice drifts in the Antarctic, a plain of land with a huge tearing rift ripped right through the middle. Severing it to clunky misshapen pieces that will never mend.

She thinks of the monotony of the life that awaits her. The house full and long line of squawking babies she and Hux are supposed to sire. Staying chained to the stove and the nursery to look after said children whilst her husband ventures off to war and glory. Being no more to him than a bedding partner and general broodmare to keep up the family honour.

She thinks sadly on having to tell Lord Ren she’s engaged. How his eyes will glitter and cut her like jagged onyx gems. How his handsome face will fall into a stoic mask. Maybe he’ll wish never to see her again? Who knows how his reaction will be.

She wished to curl up under ten thick blankets, into a little ball, and fade away to dust. Like the dead grey ashes under the fire basket in her hearth.

She thinks she might cry herself away to sleep. She can’t escape the irony of that. Most girls perched on wedded bliss didn’t sob themselves to slumber. They fidgeted and giggled and practiced swirling their initials with their intendeds in neat hand. They were struck down lovesick. Admiring their ring. Imagined themselves walking down the aisle in their Sunday best and a veil, clutching at a wedding bouquet.

Iris had none of that. The thought of walking down the aisle to Hux and the boxed in little life thereafter, made her want to dry heave until she coughed out her lungs.

She prepares herself for bed. Unlaced her new boots - with a leaden heart at the memory of who provided them for her. She slipped off her dress and stockings and when Julia brings her tea she helps unlace her stays. Asks her about her engagement.

Iris gives short, staccato words for answers. Feigning it had been a long day. The maid slips away again and Iris locks the door in her wake. Only then does she reach for her hand and wrench off the gold ring. Puts it on her vanity and the gold winks cruelly at her in the firelight.

She huffs as she undressed and slipped her nightgown on. She let loose her wild hair and tames it into a plait. Ties the end with a snippet of blue muslin. The gown slips off one shoulder as she grabs her book and balances it on her thighs. Slipping into the cool crisp sheets of her bed. The lace trimmed on her sleeves casts floral shade down her arms.

The fire cracks and she parts her book with the pressed flower she was currently using as a bookmark. She tilts into the candles light and tries to let the novel soothe her dreadful mind. It’s of little use. The words swim like black wriggling worms. She quickly abandons the idea. Tucks the book away.

Falls down into her feathered pillow. Drinks her tea and glares pointedly at the glimmering ring on her dressing table. She’s so used to feeling suffocated. But this sensation of guilt, panic and refusal churns in her belly like the worst sort of shame. Seeps out her pores like claggy grey mud. And she is made miserable by it-

A brittle tap suddenly echoes in her room. She sits up. Covers rustling about her knees. She strains her ears to make it out. Through the roaring fire and the gales brushing the stone of the house outside.

There it is. Another succession of taps. Hollow scrape. Clanking on the glass of her window. _Tap-tap-tap-_

She gets out of bed and pulls her heavy curtains across. The window was latched shut. And outside, being buffeted by the strong wind. Sits an obsidian black crow.

Feathers all ruffled in the wintry breeze. It’s little head twitches at her. Beady eyes shining off the glow of her room like amber marbles. And off the grey sheen of its broad beak. It sits there contented. Staring up at her.

She unlocks her window and pushes it up. The wood sticks and rubs from age. Cruel night air whips in. Flurrying at her thin dress. The cold snakes and twines around up her knees and legs. The crow makes a loud cawing sound. A rasping cry of a call.

It seems tame enough. She gently reaches a hand over and it sits there as she brushes at the downy feathers on its puffed out chest. Black silk to the touch.

“You’re rather congenial” She comments.

“Matter of fact you’re the first genial encounter I’ve had all day.” She remarks. Chiding herself for talking so animatedly to a bird - of all mad things.

It caws again and hops along her stone windowsill. She gasps, drawing back as it then suddenly ducks it head and swoops under the window frame. Breaching the gap and flying up over her shoulder, and into her bedroom.

She keeps from crying out in shock. Spins around to try and capture the crazed animal and return it to its rightful home outdoors. The curtains sway with her movement and she screams anew when suddenly a gigantic body is in front of her.

Before she can fully scream. Kylo’s warm eyes soothe her and one big cool hand clasps over her mouth to muffle the scream. It’s suddenly a warbled sound out from behind his massive palm that almost entirely spans her face.

He grins wickedly down at her. One thick finger pressed to his smiling lips telling her to hush. Night air and cold infused into his clothes, simply pours off him. Cologne and rich earth and frost.

She relaxes a little. Heart racing at the incident.

He’d crowded her back to the wall beside the window alcove. He reaches across and shuts it with his free arm. To help keep her warm. It doesn’t even stick at the sides when his strong arm yanks it down.

“Thank god for that. Dove. I thought you’d never let me in.” He explains smugly. She has so many questions about his varied animal forms. But she won’t ask them now. She’s just overwhelmed that he’s here.

He brushes off his lapels after taking his hand from her face. Pressing it to the wall beside her instead. She’s all too aware she’s clad only in a thin nightgown. And suddenly now there is a large Lord before her. Mere inches between them. Scant inches and she only has thin cotton swathing her body.

A million questions thunder and strike in her brain.

  
She settles on; “What are you doing here?” Whispers with a tender little smile starting to grow on her lips.

She’s aghast but ultimately pleased beyond measure to see him. She felt like she has strength again now he’s here.

His thumb strokes at her cheek. “Checking on the woman I love.. if I may.” He answers plainly.

Her heart melts into mush in her chest. Slips out and down between the cracks of her ribs like treacle. She aches for him.

He notices how her face pinched up. “Iris?” He asks.

“I am to be married.” She whispers. Thoroughly ashamed. Waiting to see his repulsed reaction. Biting her bottom lip nervously. Looking down to her feet.

He tips her chin up to look at him. Frowns at seeing the tears of shame in her eyes.

He smiles tenderly. “Dove. I _know_.” He explains. As he cups her cheek.

“I always knew this was going to happen. After all - courting can only end two ways. And your mother was most serious about securing a match.”

“I said yes. I hate myself for it. But I said I’d accept.” She cries. He soothes away her tears with his thumb.

Hushes her. Pulls her into his chest and holds her close.

His big hand strokes her hair and she lets herself sob into his wide firm chest. Fingers grazing his clothes. Her brow wedged into the crook of his cool neck. He tucks her into him. One hand cups her head and the other spans the back of her hips. She never had anyone to confide in. But she has him now. She’ll always have him.

She has little choice in the matter. Whether she wanted him or not. She’s got him.

“All will be well. I promise you.” He assures.

She sighs. It’s so pleasing to finally have someone on her side.

“I’ve had to sit there and listen to his mother spouting out about grandchildren and marital duty when I wanted to do was run from the room screaming.” She gasps. More tears soaking into his clothing. Eyes crinkled up shut in sadness.

She knows were he any other man, she’d have to school her words more carefully. But to him she can speak freely about anything. Her soul was stitched to his.

“Pay their vapid ignorance no mind.” He kisses a whisper into her hair. Groaning at the feel of the silk and scent of it against his lips. “You’re worth so much more to me, than all their expected limitations of you.” He speaks softly.

“I can’t do it.” She admits. She crumbles. Finally she can speak what she truly feels. Let out what was making guilt rot at her like acid all night through.

Because really those four innocent tiny-little words had been perched on the tip of her tongue all evening. She just hasn’t the bravery to let them loose.

“My little dove.” He sighs fondly as kisses her head. Pained for her from feeling her heartbreak. “You won’t have too.”

She feels him breathe where she’s cuddled into him. It’s a strange comfort. It’s the height of impropriety but she cannot care about it anymore.

She pulls back and looks up at him. Tears leak down her cheeks. He takes them away again. “Pray, whatever do you mean?” She seeks.

“Come here.” He says. Breaking away for a moment. He guides her to sit on her bed and crouches to level in front of her. Both hands taking hers. He kisses both sets of her knuckles before he begins. Looking up at her. His wrists rest on her knees.

“You think I would allow you to marry that spoilt snobbish boy?” He asks her with a careful grin. His eyes look darkly salacious.

“You think I could let another man take you, when you are mine, and mine alone?” He smiles wickedly. Seductive notes intoxicating in his deep voice.

She could kiss him to death right now if it wasn’t entirely inappropriate. She wants to hold him tight so much- she could burst. Wrap her arms around this kind man and never leave him. She can never be parted from him now.

She sighs happily through her tears. Reaching across and stroking her right hand through his thick shaggy hair. Black locks cool against her palm from his excursion out in the wild black night air. His eyes look like tempests. Black flecked with gold that rings his pupils.

Such sincerity shines out his face- it’s like a hopeful glimpse of the sun after a harsh winter. He’s saying such nice things and such nice warm words of love flow through her veins like ambrosia.

He takes her hand and kisses her palm. Sighing at the taste and scent of her skin. It had never failed to drive him wild with need.

“Run away with me. And marry me.” He offers. Eyes slicing hot into her own. Watching the flickering firelight kiss her skin.

Her mouth gapes. She draws in a breath but her head is spinning so madly she feels dizzy. He explains more to her of this sordid plan.

“Half my household is shut up. Most of my staff have packed and gone already. Left these shores bound for Bavaria. I set sail in seven days time.” He explains.

The thought of him leaving sends such a spear of white hot pain through her heart she doesn’t think she could ever survive it if he left. Madness when she’s had all these years of life without him.

She doesn’t feel the same anymore. She isn’t. She’s in love and it has changed her irrevocably. He’s burst into her life, in a big assuming dark shadowing presence and stolen her heart away. And given him hers in return.

She knows she can never be without him - it feels like it would kill her for them to be apart.

“We could elope. Make for Gretna green and be man and wife by the weeks end. We can set sail for the port of Hamburg as Lord and Lady. Until passage is booked, we could honeymoon in the highlands for a handful of days.” His eyes turn particularly lustful at that comment.

Smile is savage and sharp. So potent a smouldering look it makes her toes curl up in longing.

She could do it. She could run away with this man, sneaking off into the dead of night. To go to seize her greatest happiness. For once she could selfishly and recklessly take control of her own life.

Loving Kylo as she does, he makes her feel just brave and strong enough to do it-

She wets her lips. Giddy. This is her chance and dear god in heaven- she’s taking it.

“What would I have to do?” She asks him in a hushed whisper.

The smile that takes over his face is magnetic. She smiles and he rises up quick and fiercely kisses her.

Claims her with that passion he spoke so finely of. Cups her neck and delivers her a kiss that has her shaking. She tries to resist the heady temptation, but she cannot.

Her knees clamp either side of his thighs where his body is towering over hers. Nearly pressing her back to her pillows. His free hand cups her lower back and clasps her into his body. Her splayed legs, and between them, rubs high at his abdomen.

He growls deep and feral into the kiss. It tumbled through her wet hot mouth She pulls away. Wide eyed and innocent, wondering if she’d hurt him. She can only see his kiss bruised smile and his clouded eyes when she pulls back. Her hands press to the bed. Clutches into the sheets. Otherwise she worries she’d tangle and lose her hands in his hair.

He sighed in bliss. Ducking his head to kiss at her clothed shoulder. Nearly shuddering with need. Arching right over her. Big body completely dominating hers. He shuts his eyes and kisses the lace at her shoulder. Taste of her lips and scent of her blood and her arousal sitting on his tongue like sugar. He so wanted to taste more-

He restrains himself or he’d take her right here - drool onto that heavenly cunt between her legs and slide his cock into her perfect heat. Fuck her for the whole damned house to hear her screeching his name.

“Forgive me.” He rasps. Voice husking with desire.

Her cheeks flush. “Nothing about that warrants forgiveness.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how I wanted to take you right here and now in your bed. Iris.” He husks. Kissing in the crook of her neck slowly and soft. Lips pressing and savouring her. Her every nerve hums with need.

He recovers his legendary discipline. Pulls back to sit at the edge of her mattress once more.

“All you’d need to do-“ He smiles. Hands settling on her knees. Holding her. Feeling the cotton and her kneecaps under his palms.

“Is dress warm, pack a manageable bag. You don’t need much. I’ll buy you everything and anything you need. Meet me in the woods just beyond the church. At midnight.” He smiles. He’d had this cunning plan circling in his head for weeks now. Now he is within grasping distance of having her as his wife. And he’s wild with love of her.

“Don’t tell anyone of this plan. Not even your sisters. Nobody. In case they try and halt the elopement...Not that anyone could stop me....” He smirks.

She smiles. “I won’t tell a soul. I’ve no one to tell.” She shrugs openly.

“Leave that foul mother of yours nothing but a note behind. That’s all she deserves for her wicked exploitation of you.” He growls.

She nods in agreement. Stroking over his big hands where they rest on her.

She doesn’t spare the energy to devote one scrap of a thought for her mother. He was right

She only wishes there was a route out of this that could mean she can say a proper goodbye to her father and her sisters. Not leave under a shroud of intrigue, gossip and scandal. Iris eloping with the dashing dark lord newly arrived to these shores would be rife in the gossip mills around here for weeks. It would quake the quiet county.

It seemed odd that it would be her. She’d be the source of ruinous ignominy. All her life she was the quiet and unassuming and plain eldest daughter. No one suspected anything of her except her obedience to blindly accept the loveless match her family provided for her. She wasn’t supposed to do anything out of the ordinary little route of her safe life.

A small scandalous corner of her heart was awfully happy to be proving all those busy bodies and old matronly gossips wrong.

“I’ll leave word for Hux too. He’s not a bad man. Just-“ she shakes her head. Watching their hands where they are joined. “He’s not the man I love or desire.” She explains.

Kylo’s eyes look warm. Like melting pools of honey and tar. They stick to her. The beauty of her blush. The prettiness of her countenance. Those ash grey eyes doused ochre in the dim firelight. A splash of honey amber whiskey poured over moonstone.

He reaches up and strokes his thumb across her cheek. “He overlooked you. Trust me. He will pay sorely for mistreating you. His honour will become quite besmirched when you elope. Stolen and tempted away by a foreign Lord with a title and an estate, to boot.” He smiles.

“Then see what he makes of his measly beloved little army commission. When he loses you.” He smirks.

“I can’t think he’ll care much about my leaving - only for the toll such infamy will have on bruising his ego.” She tells.

“Then he is the fool I always suspected him to be.” Kylo tells her seriously.

“Now. You just have to act like the most perfect doting bride-to-be for the next three days. Because come weeks end...” he trails off.

Pulling her in, sighing a soft sweet kiss onto her lips. She blushes when he kisses her. Whole body pimples in pleasure.

It’s molasses and dangerous and among all the darkly wicked things she’s never tasted. He tasted like freedom and _life_.

“... You will come back to Bavaria with me. And you will be my wife. Lady Ren of Ranlor Castle.” He smirks against her lips. Plucking passion into her.

He savours kissing her for a moment. Losing himself in the manna that was her lips. She’s ivory rose petals and sugar whipped with cream. Gorgeous and delicious and he can’t wait for more. Before he can kiss her lips pink and raw, he takes his leave.

“Get some sleep. Little Dove. I’ll send word when all is set.” He smirks before he’s out into that wild night again. Leaving her heart racing and her hope restored.

~


	15. Anticipation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We stan a very smug vampire Lord ❣️

The very next days seemed to crawl by. As if time itself was dragging through claggy thick treacle.

Nothing moved quickly and Iris knows it’s because she’s anticipating the weeks-end more than any other event she’s ever awaited on in her life.

More than Yuletide morning. More than her birthday. More than buying a new book or taking an early morning walk all to herself. More than a sunny frosted morning where everything seems to glimmer as if crafted from gold, or seeing wildflowers dot the woods with their colour in spring.

She’s waiting on that much anticipated midnight with baited breath. Every second closer to it is both torture and sweet blessed relief.

She fulfils her remaining days with a permanent smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Even her acetous mother remarks upon it. She tells her daughter the fine manner of her engagement must be bringing her joy. Iris bites her lip to keep from grinning.

She clutched her romantic secret all that tighter to her chest. Moulded it like warm clay to clasp around her glad heart.

Mother and Maratella insist on setting a date. And getting her whole ‘bouquet’ of daughters measured for their gowns.

Posy and Flora for they are of course to be bridesmaids, and Iris, of course, for her bridal gown. They get up a merry party to Pembleton one fine clear morning.

The snow and frost govern the landscape once more. Ebbing back in after the recent rain. The brown frost-hardened hills and trees and fields. Governed under the fierce cyclops of a mustard sun blazing in the effortless blue of the cobalt sky. It made Iris think of robins eggs, and the golden buttery buds of spring. When the bulbs and shoots blossom up through the earth with their sickly scent and colour.

It is a fine clear day and it indicates that the end of the long bitter winter approaches. The cold is as ferocious as ever so Maratella insists upon them not catching a chill in the vile icy winds. Shes most kind as to stop to collect the Misses Ashton’s in the Hux’s second largest coach. They are all bid to the dressmakers in the high street. Along the medieval shamble of barrel window and oak timber shops.

The news of her engagement spread far and wide. Before her boots have even touched the cobbles, stepping out the coach, their party is virtually mobbed by matrons and ladies of their acquaintance.

Iris had in mind a silly image of them prowling at the pavements like baying wolves, chasing after the muddy churn of the carriage wheels; anything for to first seize that newest scrap of gossip.

Posy and Flora ladle up all the attention. As does Mama. Proudly boasting - along with Maratella - of the suitability of such a fine match. Iris wants to roll her eyes as Flora greatly exaggerated the romantic manner of Hux’s proposition. She gabbled about a room full of red roses and how Iris wept tears of delight as he swept her into his arms.

The ravenous eyes turn toward her. “May we see the ring, Miss Ashton?” Comes out of numerous smiling mouths like a chorus of cawing seagulls. Iris feels like they’ll rip her glove off themselves if she doesn’t.

Unused to such attention, she blushes as she slips off her grey calfskin glove. Wrenching it off her hand. There is a troupe of awed gasps as they admire the diamond set in the gold band.

Iris feels as if she’s sticking her hand into a dangerous animals maw. Like some exhibit at a zoo. Feeding her hand to the rabid starving tiger’s. There’s so much gasping and in taking of breath it’s a wonder they don’t suck her up. And take half the street with them.

Luckily, Maratella fusses that they’ll be late if they don’t make haste. She then proudly utters that the ladies five, their happy little bridal party, are off to Madame Larousse’s dressmaking parlour for a wedding gown. And Mrs Ashton and Mrs Hux are to see to both having new hats to mark such a happy occasion.

The flock of ravenous ladies ceases. Satisfied with their mauling of Iris and her news and her engagement ring. The party is able to proceed along the pavement unhindered.

They slip into Madame Larousse’s. Greeted by the lanky, heavily perfumed proprietor herself. She was a tall, ungainly woman with poky shoulders and an always over-rouged complexion. And will always, without fail, exaggerate a mildly French accent to gild her words. For she believes that all the best dressmakers and seamstresses were French.

The tall stretch of Madame claps excitedly and demands to see Iris’ hand when she hears they are here to purchase ribbons and lace and all things fit for a bride. She is whisked away by a very efficient assistant. And stood on a pedestal for the next hour and half.

Iris spends that time with swatches pinned to her. Flapped around her ears. Tucked under her collar. There’s so many back and forth decisions from her mother, it makes her quite dizzy. A tape drawn tight around her so many times to squeeze the stuffing out her. Eventually, they stumble to a conclusion. It was to be a saffron orange.

Flora remarked it made her rather look like a carrot.

Around her they lounge on the chaises provided, clutched around the mirror and the box she’s on, and they drink sweet tea. Brown sugar sprinkled and stirred into the earl grey.

They all pose interjections and opinions and preferences on her. Iris just stands there like a tailors doll. Only half there.

She’s caught sight of a swatch of ruby-wine velvet near her thigh and is stroking it fondly. Remembering Lord Rens exquisite bed coverlet. How it felt under her fingers, it took her ricocheting back to that moment. And it calmed her.

That’s how she can stand all this grousing and prodding. It reminds her of her secret and she nearly faints off that box pedestal.

They settle on a pallid frothy blue silk instead. To better bring out the excellence of her mud and twigs hair. Mama chooses the best silk madame has in stock. Says she will have to fetch more in from her supplier especially. From London.

That causes much excitement for Flora and Posy. They’d never had a dress made from material fetched as far nor from a city as grand as London, before.

Posy had selected a teasing slip of pink silk. Flora, for her more fiery hair, chose a delicate pastel pea green. Iris thinks they’ll look like a platter of French fancy cakes.

Then a pang of something hits through her heart with all the intensity of an arrowhead studding there - she hopes Mama lets Posy and Flora keep their new gowns after she’s gone. She hopes very much. They are the stillest girls in existence but they do deserve nicer things than what they get.

By Madame’s husky drawl of a smoky voice is she brought back into the room, the awful pink pink pink room. Stuffed with velvet chaises and bolster cushions and trimmed fringed oil lamps. Great big fat rosebuds sprout up the wallpaper and flourish across the fabric of the pillows on the settee.

It’s as if the whole room is the summoning of the evil fairy in sleeping beauty. Who commanded swarms of brambles and thorns and swamping plants to take over. That was this room to the last pink thread - only it was instead summoned to contain every incarnation of pink roses as far as the eye could see.

Her ears burn hot and pink as Madame talks of London. Relating the gossip back to someone in the village. Matter of fact, a certain Lord-

“Apparantly, you know he sent that tall turbaned butler of his up to London just yesterday...” Madame hushes to them in her hazy terribly-affected French.

“Sent him to Mayfair.” She grins crookedly as she measures from Iris’s hip to her hem. Barking orders at Suzy, her ever suffering assistant.

Maratella seems most diverted. “Pray whatever for?” She leans forwards. Perching her half eaten violet macaroon on her saucer.

“He sent him to Bond Street. You know there is an establishment there that supplies jewels to the palace. Apparantly he came back having purchased something.” Madame says.

“Pray why would be send his butler all that way?” Flora asks.

“Why, Miss Smith told me so this morning; she suspects Lord Ren has left his heart behind in Bavaria. He is soon to quit Hellford. She heard Clarence Pennington’s butler say that his housekeeper, Mrs Jones states that half his house is shut. And the staff vacated.” Maratella excites them all. Flora and Posy are mortified at such news.

“The house is emptying. And Lord Ren shall soon be gone.” She adds.

Mrs Ashton smiles gladly. “He is journeying back home to his castle I wager...” She delights. The spitting smug nature of her tone was clear. _Good riddance._

_“_ Who must he be besotted with I wonder?” Posy asks indelicately.

Iris tries not to be twice as smug. Thinking that she is that very woman.

_He goes back to his castle and I will gladly go with him,_ she thinks.

The giddiness and joy roils in her stomach like golden champagne. Fizzes through her veins and she has to hide a smile. Biting her cheek hard.

“Well. if he is shortly to leave our shores. I’m willing to bet he’ll break a fair few maidens hearts in this county and the next over. Such a striking gentleman. The young ladies will certainly feel his loss most keenly.” Maratella comments in sadness for all the female admirers he’d amassed. They’d all be heart sore now he’s going away.

“You’re blushing Iris.” Flora sing-songs at her. Pointing it out. “Thoughts of your intended sweetheart?” She ribs her sister.

“You are a colossal pest. Flora.” Iris smiles at her. Matter of fact. Her little bug of a sister is quite right. She is thinking about the man she’ll marry.

Only another agonising hour whilst Mama and Maratella select their hats for the occasion. But Iris can atleast sit down and drink some much too sweet earl grey tea. Doesn’t have to stand on that wretched box for another hour.

Eventually their purchases were rung up and settled. Flora and Posy love Iris very much because she buys them two new ribbons each and some velvet buttons for their bonnets. They’re singing her praises as they quit the shop. Trilling like a pair of canaries about their gowns. Iris was glad to spend some of her pin money on them before she leaves for good.

She’s fully appraised of the weight of her actions. And the serious consequence of them. It would be ruinous for her mother and father. It would be a disaster for her sisters. But atleast she was of age and she could marry. Whatever else others might say of her - she fully believes Lord Ren’s intentions are honourable.

They can’t scandalise her for marrying Kylo. Just censure her for running away from Hux and jilting him. She’s certain he’ll recover amicably enough. He doesn’t love her. And his mother is suitably well connected. She could snap her fingers and summon another willing bride. She’s only sorry it can’t be her.

She’s despondent to remark upon the pain she’ll be causing hers and Hux’s family. But in time, they will recover. Posy would do well and Flora will follow in her footsteps. Mother will see to it they catch fine husbands when the time is right. Their mother is most skilled in that area.

The party journeys along Pembleton street. Maratella stops by the haberdashers to seek after some ribbons. Mama is in the milliners seeking after a new pair of occasion gloves. Posy and Flora amble slowly along the street with their sister. Watching the carriages and coaches trundle by. Various riders on horseback too.

A loud nickering snort behind her makes her turn. She can hardly hide the smile that quickly grows across her face when she catches sight of a lone rider on a huge stocky black stallion. Both man and his mount are furiously muscled beasts.

His Lordly attire is its usual. All black. Save for his white shirt and red cravat. The great overcoat frames his wide shoulders and his bulky chest. His boots gleam in the meagre sun. His grin tips up when he catches sight of her.

He looks terribly smug and Iris’s heart feels like it’s trying to ram out the cage of her ribs. This handsome lordly man who stole it away, sets it pounding freely and rampant in her chest.

She tries not to arouse the suspicion of her sisters. They were much too curious and meddling for their own good. She wants to protect her secret and she thinks she’s a proficient enough liar to accomplish it.

They burst into fits of giggles on seeing him. He rides Erland closer to where they are stood and dismounts. His strong boots thud into the frosty mud. His wool coat laps and swathes his body. He tethered himself to Erland. Massive gloved hand gripping the reins. The creature didn’t seem to have any care for wandering off. He just wished to see Iris - Kylo empathises with the horse. He rather feels the exact same.

Iris, Posy and Flora all curtsey to him. He bids them all a greeting. She bows her neck and when she looks up. His eyes fondly fix on her. Warm in the sun. The contrast of him is astonishing. Milky creamy complexion, bordered by the onyx shadow of his hair and eyes. Utter opposites in the juxtaposition.

“Miss Ashton. A pleasure to see you again. I trust you are still well recovered. You look very radiant this morning.” He comments. Walking Erland just that tiny step closer.

The obstinate animal his stallion is, reaches his nose out and snorts into her hand. Nudges her glove for pats and scritches of affection behind his ears. She doesn’t care that she’ll get horse hair on her. She strokes him.

“You are most kind. Your lordship. I am very well.” She smiles slightly. The pretty kiss of rose on her cheeks.

“I need not tell you Erland is pleased to make your acquaintance once more.” He remarks starkly. Hint of irony not lost on her. Erland almost nudges her to fall over with his big strong head. She laughs.

“Your ears must’ve been burning. Lord Ren. For we were just discussing you...” Posy flirts. Batting her lashes at the man.

Hands crossed in front of her. Like she was a genteel little doe. Iris glares narrowed silver dagger eyes at her sister to stop displaying herself so readily. As ever, the little vexation pays no attention. Not when there was a hot blooded male around.

Kylo tilts his head. Intrigued. “Is that so, Miss Posy?” He asks.

“We we’re discussing how heart sore all the young ladies hereabouts will be when you quit Hampshire...” Flora tells him.

Kylo takes her confession in his stride. “It’s true. And I am sorry more than I can exclaim to be leaving such carnage and desolation in my wake. But sadly I do return to Bavaria shortly.”

That handsome expression barely betrays a thing. The cold wind flounces and ruffles that wild hair. A tuft of it drifts in his face and tangled in his dark eyeline.

Iris decides in that moment he truly might be an angel sculpted by gods own hand; or a demon designed by the devil himself. She isn’t sure which of those creatures is all the more tempting.

One thing she’s certain of; He’d win that draw of most handsome, every time.

She quivers when those eyes gaze at her. Peels her right out her clothes and down to her goose pimpled skin. Then Posy has to go and open her foolhardy mouth some more...

“We were just helping Iris shop for her bridal gown.” She preens. “And our bridesmaids dresses.” She comments. Speaking as if she wants Kylo to snatch her up and steal her away to Bavaria. Stuff her in his pocket and run off with her.

“I had heard rumour of your engagement...” He lies. Iris is biting the inside of her lip and smiling genially to hide how wide her excitement wishes to make her smile grow.

“Show Lord Ren your engagement ring, Iris!” Flora bounces excitedly. Iris glares. Reminding her of the inappropriate nature of her words.

“Flora. Lord Ren is not interested in such matters. And I’m afraid we’ve already impressed upon too much of his time...” She insists.

Kylo holds out his hand to her. Steps closer so she has to crane her head back just to keep sight of his eyes. “I am certainly interested. And I might add, most eager to see the bauble that decorates such a fine, pretty hand.” He teases.

She decides he was designed by the devil. And lucifer gave him a silver tongue to boot-

Iris slips off her grey glove and gently lays her palm in his.

The way his fingers curl around hers is criminal. She tips her eyes up to his as he shifts closer and admires her ring. A soft smile tugs at his mouth. The gold winks at him in the sun. It’s a pretty delicate morsel. He can’t deny. But plain. Much too plain. Entirely humble as decoration went.

- _it’s certainly nothing_ to the one he’d had Jomar go all the way to London to fetch for her from Bentley & Skinner on Bond Street.

“It is a fine ring. Miss Ashton. Sergeant Hux is the most fortunate man in England to have you as his intended bride. I’m quite envious of his fortuity.” He says. Bowing to lay a kiss on the back of her palm.

His eyes electrify her. He winks at her and she flushes with heat. Blood pressing up in her face.

“I’m sorry to hear of your leaving England. Lord Ren. Such a shame Hellford Park should be quitted before the summer.” She tells him.

Her palm leaving his. Sliding away from the touch of his hand would have made her wretched were it not for the heat in his bronzed eyes. Made a warmer melting shade by the shimmer of the buttery sun. And their shared secret lifts her heart.

“It is a great shame. But I’m eager to return to Ranlor. I’ve missed my homeland a great deal.”

“The rumour in circulation is that you have a certain lady in mind to return home too.” Posy dares most outlandishly. Iris chides her for her brash rudeness.

“ _Posy!”_ Iris calls out.

Kylo seems amused by it. “That would he telling. Miss Posy. Not to mention betraying the confidence of the most honourable lady in question.” He smirks at her sister.

Who giggles and blushes like it’s no ones business. His vampiric charms seeping out of his every pore, truly intoxicating to them, Iris can see it’s influence.

“Is she a great beauty? I imagine she is most elegant indeed and very superior and titled in rank and manner. And of great fortune...” Posy digs for more details. Kylo will reveal none.

“Pray. Don’t be impertinent twice-over.” Iris corrects. Posy pulls a vexed face. Shoves her tongue out at her sister.

Kylo’s chuckling. They were entertaining little chits. Relentless. But he admires something about that sparky quality. Iris had the same sense about her - only more sensible and humble.

“She is the singularly, most beautiful creature I’ve ever beheld in all my years.” He promises. “And I cannot wait to have her hand in marriage. She will make me a very blessed and lucky man.” He declares.

“How romantic.” Posy declares in a sigh. Flora dreamily agrees. They’re both veritably Moony eyed. Gazing up at him in wonder as a consequence. A silly girls kryptonite. A handsome and dark romantic man. A Byronic figure to set all the foolish girls swooning at the knees.

Kylo’s eyes sweep across to Iris at a passing glance. He smiles. And it almost undoes her.

“We must be on our way. We’ve availed ourselves of too much of your time. Lord Ren.” Iris says in parting. Trying to herd her vapid sisters away before they flirt anymore.

“We must go. For we are bid to the Hux’s tonight for a celebratory engagement supper.” Posy curtsies boasting as she’s bobbing away.

“Give the Sergeant and his family my warmest regards.” Kylo insists. Knowing what a barb that would be to Hux’s temper.

Iris turns and meets his eyes. Giving him a polite bowed head in parting. When Posy and Flora are otherwise looking elsewhere. She turns back and gives him such a look of longing and delight it makes him grin at her as she walks off down the cobbled pavement.

“Very good to see you again. Your Lordship. Have a pleasant rest of your day.” She insists.

Cajoling her sisters along the path and away before they get any notions. Erland snorts at her as she moved away. She smiles and gladly rubs the flat bone of his nose before she goes. Lord Ren stays standing until she does move away.

Kylo pats his neck, and hauls himself up on his strong stallions back once again. Booted feet in the stirrups. He adjusts on the saddle. Scanning the tumbled windows of the high street proprietors.

In the milliners, he sees a face like sour lemons and thunder glaring out at him. Mrs Ashton’s stony face peering outwards through the glass. Having seen his exchange with all her daughters.

He coaxes Erland into a slow walk. A little nudge in his side. He gives the foul Caroline Ashton his most winning enigmatic smile. And nods civilly in greeting at her as he rides off.

He sees it makes her lips purse in irritation.

Iris can’t resist glancing back at him. She knows those eyes watch her all the way down the street. She can feel them. Two pinpricks of heat, like candles, burning into her shoulder-blades.

It makes her too giddy for words.

They soon catch up with the rest of their party and are whisked away in the Hux carriage. Soaring across the dirty English roads. Mud churning in their wake as cold air and sunshine bounces off the roof.

Mama asks them what Lord Ren. Iris told them he was just politely passing the time of day. She seems satisfied with the answer. Iris fights not to squirm into shivers of desire at the merest intimation and memory of him.

Posy and Flora sing-song his romantic praises all the way home. Mother soon shuts them up with a cross cold stare.

The afternoon seems to fly her by. No sooner than she’s home and she’s readying herself for the dinner they’ll take at the Hux’s residence. Cavenham House.

The not so modest estate in the border of the next county. A gorgeous house if she’s being perfectly honest. Terracotta red bricked exterior, of modern Georgian design. Huge arched white windows. Rococo interior. All gilded with cherubs frolicking on the murky painted ceilings and baroque trim on every door. Rolling scrolls. Frescoes and pastel colours. Gilding, moulding and trompe l’oeils giving the illusion of motion and drama. Raining down from every ceiling.

A handsomely kept garden was also what it was resolutely famous for. Though it would not be pictured to its best quality in this dead winter. Spring will liven it soon. The hardy bright bulbs will crop up through the frost. But for now it remains speckled in snow with only the evergreens surviving.

Iris can see it all as they pull up the long stretch of the torch lit drive. In the coach Maratella was kind enough to send to collect them all.

Once again she was wedged beside Posy and Flora, and their shrill gossiping. Mother and Father opposite. Noiseless and as disagreeing as ever. Silence blazed between them as somber as a churchyard. They were about as animated with each other as two gravestones.

Iris dressed in her navy silk gown with 3/4 sleeves and a sheer white chemisette swirled with stitched white flowers, decorating her shoulders and neck. Meg cleverly weaves that teal ribbon into her hair coiffure again. She finishes the look with pearl droplet earrings and white satin gloves up to her elbows.

They are welcomed inside by stony faced servants in the blue Cavenham livery. Taken into the drawing room to meet their hosts. Maratella had invited some local flavour along also. Everyone’s merry and mingling. Posy offers to play a Handel piece on the Pianoforte before dinner is announced. She does so rather well. Thunks the opening notes in shocking volume but she picks up from that point onwards.

Iris is admiring the scenery from the drawing room window. Even in the dark she can see how lovely the gardens are. It doesn’t dissolve the fact that this house would still be a prison to her. There weren’t bars on the window and she won’t exactly be stitching mailbags - but it will still be her cage.

A handsome cage, she won’t deny. But a cage nonetheless as she mothers the children and lives for planning fine parties to boast of her and her husbands excellence. And slowly becomes a woman of high rank and no substance.

Hux moves to stand by her side, hands folded behind his back. A tall lean column of red, black and white in his ceremonial dress. Medals shining. Hair groomed. Perfectly respectable. Infuriatingly loveless, as always.

“You shall like the gardens in summer. I should think.” He remarks.

“They are most handsome.” She comments. “A fine prospect indeed.” She agrees.

They perfectly form the vision of lovers conversing by candlelight. She can hear Mama and Mrs. Hux cooing proudly behind them. It’s infuriating. Iris can’t spend the rest of her life in a manner such as this; being prodded and manoeuvred and gossiped over like a chess piece on a board.

“I care little for being out of doors. Save for riding with my regiment.” He impresses.

Iris nods. “I am perhaps overfond of walking. I take an excursion each day if I can.” She tells him.

He sniffs. And coldly watches the view before them. “Well. You shall have to make allowances and sacrifices when we are wed. I can’t have you scampering around the countryside when you are with my heir.” He insists.

Iris’s mouth turns dry. She makes little response to his words. He turns away to speak to someone else but she catches his arm to stop him.

“Please I just want to say-“ she starts.

She looks up into his face. The bright copper of his hair and the steel of his eyes. The surety of his rigid auburn brow. She doesn’t dislike him. He’s not an unpleasant man. Just, misguided.

She says what she’s thinking now before she loses the chance. No doubt he’ll think very badly of her when all is done.

“I think well of you. You know. You are a gallant man. Not lacking in honour or credibility. I admire that about you. Hux.” She says. _Even if I can’t marry you for it._

He nods. Accepting her words. Then their granite faced butler coughs dryly and announces dinner to the room.

Maratella lets the engaged couple be seated next to each other at dinner. Wanting to encourage the tepid affection brewing between them. Iris doesn’t know what the woman expects from them. They weren’t matched for love but it’s as if that’s what she’s hoping to see blossom.

  
Maratella is hoping for romance to pass betwixt them.

_It could and never will be that._ Iris thinks.

Iris remarks inwardly to herself as she sips down her soup a la reine. Served alongside several large golden Bouchée à la reine’s. 

The next course is of stewed beef and venison steaks, and a whole champagne poached salmon with slithers of white and black truffles decorating the cooked fish acting as scales.

More seafood came served in the form of fried then boiled sole, heaped in a terrine and a whole platter of pickled crab. A haricott of vegetables and mashed turnips. There was enough food spread on this very grand table, to keep them dining for a fortnight. Mrs Hux organised a feast intended to show off.

She gets everyone to toast to the newlyweds. The gentleman stand to raise their glasses and the ladies stay seated.

The pudding banquet is brought out and quite rightly enough, as she suspected, the whole table is flouncing in ruched fancy french sugar concoctions.

Silken French pies. Syllabubs of lemon and rose and brandy. Ice’s of all flavours. Custard tarts smothered with fat ripe fruit drowning steeped in syrup. Sugar plums and cinnamon and mace laced apple tartlets with baked custard. Iris indulged in some of the tarts and the fruits.

Posy and Flora fall upon creams and dainty fancies like hungry wolves. And eat until they are stuffed.

The ladies retire to the parlour for music and snifters of sweet ruby port wine. Iris indulges in a glass as her sisters and various other young accomplished ladies take to the pianoforte to sing and show off. Posy drags a reluctant Iris up to [sing](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UNP9fvStXC4) whilst she plays. She grumbles but bends to her sisters will.

She gives a shortly sweet chorus of ‘Let no man steal your thyme’ for it was the only song she could sing comfortably well.

She never much liked performing for amusement. Some girls were a glutton for it. Iris is no such a one. She stands with one hand on the pianoforte and the other folded behind her hip. She sings her choruses and smiles meekly at the small scattering of applause offered for her when she is done.

She heads back to her spot on the settee. Maratella is remarking to her mother how divine it will be to have a songbird in the house once again. Iris sits back in her seat and spends the rest of her evening in silence. Though she wants to say a great deal.

The evening slips past well enough. Night spills past her relatively quick. Another day gone. Another day closer to her happiness. She’s almost too giddy to contain it.

Then the time comes to bid goodnight to their hosts;

Iris watches as Hux fondly kisses her hand. Seeing her off out the rich gilded foyer out into the black black night. Sky so dark it’s a whole void studded with freckling stars. Cold shudders at the shivering trees.

She wants to say something impactful and veiled. To speak of her regard for him. She cannot think how best to do so. She swallows down her thick tongue. Remains a coward.

She can only hope in time, after the wake of her scandal settles. That Hux will find someone better suited than her. Maybe even find someone that he can love? She prays deeply for that little happy happenstance.

She is not so unfeeling as to wish a joyless life on the man who just wasn’t correct for her.

Her teeth grits with all the things unsaid. “I hope you’ll be happy.” She smiles lightly. He thinks her to be referring to the engagement that stands between them.

“I’m sure.” He comments. “Goodnight.” Is his curt response.

It doesn’t incense her. Tonight it vexed her. Caused a tiny crease between her brows. It seemed such fickle words to part on. But she leaves them be-

Let’s those words spirit up into the quiet undisturb of the night. The heavens can have those words. Iris wishes it could have been more. But how appropriate is it that even his parting words are found wanting.

She gets into the coach after curtseying a polite goodbye to Brendol and Maratella. She says something sweet to Iris about her singing. Iris cringes a smile. She won’t be thinking such good things about her shortly. She imagines she’ll curse her name for all of hell and heaven to hear. She’ll wake the sleeping dead cursing the day Iris was born.

Iris thanks her. For her hospitality. For her kindness. Under all her airs and graves, she’s a fairly nice woman and she should find a more amicable daughter-in-law to crow over.

She slots herself into the coach beside her sisters. Listens to the door slam shut. The rattle and crunch of it shifts on the gravel. Rumbled away up the long elegant curve of the drive.

Iris twists to look back. She isn’t sure why she wanted too. But they weren’t a dismal family. And she’s sorry for the pain and offence she’ll cause to them all.

She watches Hux’s stiffly-posed, regimented figure. Shadowed against the night. The scarlet of his blood coat. The ice white of his breeches stained blue, glowing in the night. The stars glimmer off his shining boots and off the pierce of his pale eyes. She wishes him well. She truly does.

They trundle on home. Full of food and as usual with Posy and Flora spouting gossip on and on endlessly. Mother chiming in. Father and Iris retain their silence. Eyes cross firing in a glance when they all agree on something cruel and senseless.

Westwell’s windows emerge gold out the dark. Surrounded by the bustling trees. All of the landscape is merely dark moulded shapes. Looming and shifting in the shadows. The moon casts washy film of silver to try and spill over the cover of smeared clouds.

They are just to the drive when a small dark shape flits overhead. Iris looks upwards, and sees the definable shape of a bird landing on her windowsill. She smiles giddily.

She exits the coach quick. Bidding them goodnight and rushing off up to her room. Her skirts picked up in her hands. Mama remarks how odd it is. Posy shrugs and supposes she’s got a secret missive to read from Hux.

Iris absolutely flies for her door. Twists the handle and launches herself in the room. Shutting the door firmly after herself. Pressing it with both hands flat to the wood.

The warmth of the fire hits her. She doesn’t even pay mind to the tiny crack of her open window. Or her swaying curtains that shift on the breeze.

She can only focus on the huge frame of a dashing vampire stood fireside. One elbow resting on the mantel as he gazes into the flames.

His big frame swallows up the whole room and strangled out all the air. The ochre of the blazing flames captured his skin. Turned that milky-cream of his complexion into pale fire.

She smiles and he does too. “Thank goodness it’s you. I was worried I’d scare seven shades out of your maid.” He drawls softly so his voice doesn’t carry. Smirk curling at the corners.

She crosses the distance. Her feet eat up the floorboards quick. She avails herself of an embrace. Throws herself into his arms.

The cloak of his fire warmed clothing envelopes her as his arms do. He smells like the damp snap of frosty woodland and the acid tang of woodsmoke. The night air of wild outdoors clings to every inch and fibre of his clothes. Swirls about him like a clouding tempest.

He chuckles as she gets herself in his hold. The deep bass of his voice rumbled through her skin and sinking to her bones. Her cheek mashed to his sternum. His arms close around her. Stroking her body through the rasping silk of her dress.

One big warmed hand clasps the back of her neck as the other holds the back of her waist. His nose nudges into the crush of her muddy hair. Her scent teases him just as much as his had, to her. Lavender and sage. The plain spice and calm floral scent.

“I could feel the happiness pouring off you as you alighted the stairs.” He smiles. She steps back and gazed up at him.

“How pretty you look tonight. Dove. You’re exquisite in silk.” He remarks when she steps away. Hand toying with the loose tawny curl at her ear. The sapphire dark of her dress suits her very well. Throws her complexion into brilliance. Does something to make the tones of her hair look rich.

She always looks ravishing to him.

She blushes. “I missed you all day. Isn’t that mad?” She asks.

“If missing is madness, then I’m out of my sane mind whenever you’re not in my sight.” He promises gently.

Big hands cupping her hot silken neck as he leans down to plant a firm, slanting kiss to her lips. His mouth is cold and he tastes of frosty air and wine.

Kissing him is like kissing someone who just stepped inside, taking shelter from a bitter cold wind.

She’s beginning to wonder if there is some clever addiction woven into his lips. One kiss never seems to be enough. She holds his wrists as he grabs her. Makes her feel small in his arms. She’s lost in his hold. It’s powerfully thrilling.

He breaks the kiss and his thumbs stroke at her cheeks. Her eyes glitter keenly at him. He spies the ring on her finger. The one that doesn’t belong there. It makes him smile.

“I’d like to surmise you snuck in here just to steal a kiss. But I suspect a different motive altogether?” She asks.

He broke into a grin that creases his eyes and bares his teeth in a smile. She was no thoughtless woman; his darling Iris.

She’s always thinking. Always fretting. Always mulling over things in her head.

That was one of the first things that that came to his notice about her. She tended to be introspective about all manner of things in comparison to her acetous mother who spewed vile words. And her daft sisters who spouted out their every dangerously silly thought.

He kisses her for that clever remark- slow and paced and soft. Languid like melting warm honey. Lips curling to hers.

“I do have some news. But kissing you will always my first priority.” He husks against her rosy lips. Her warm cheeks blaze from under his icy fingers.

“The date is set. We must leave tomorrow eve.” He tells her with a smirk.

Her stomach completely soars in giddiness. She doesn’t have to hide her grin here.

“It feels as if I’ve been waiting at eternity to hear those blessed words.” She cries in happiness.

“Slip away to me after everyone’s gone to bed.” He instructs. She agrees.

“Mother has been pleased with my conduct of late. She’ll have let her guard down over tonight. I’ll leave once everyone is abed. Even the maids.” She tells him.

Stroking her fingers down the finery of his waistcoat where they’re still stood close to each other. The material was so soft. The softest grain of velvet she’s ever felt.

“You don’t have to bring too much. I can buy you everything you may ever need.” He leers. Cupping her cheek. Feeling the smooth of her skin. Right up her jaw.

His eyes carve flinty paths down her neck as he strokes his fingers there. Her pulse quickens. He can feel and hear her blood slushing hot through her veins.

She shrugs. “I cherish very few possessions. Posy and Flora can have the rest.” She insists. Her hand coming up to stroke over his thick crook of elbow with the hand that’s touching her neck.

He drags the edge of the chemisette down and strokes along the flat of her collarbone. His eyes turn into a palette of bittersweet autumn. Orange and gold swirled with flecks of russet brown.

“Is it difficult?” She asks suddenly.

“Restraining from the need to...” Her face fixed on his. Words trailing away. Air bursting with heat and lust. His eyes snap from her neck to her face. Her cheeks bloom rose petal red. Blood red and hot.

“To feed?” He asks her. She swallows and nods.

His other hand catches the back of her hips reels her right in close. She gasps. Air around them thick and full of snapping sparking static. Her hands press to his cavernous chest.

“I have got several hundred years of restraint up my sleeve.” He crooks a smirk.

His eyes flicker to watch her jugular pulse. The thrum of her little timpani heart makes his mouth wet. He knows she’d taste like salt and sickly Turkish roses and warm bronze coins.

He presses the chemisette aside again and nudges his nose against her pulse point. Right at the epicentre of his life’s greatest desire. He hums a kiss against her neck and she almost faints-

“You shake all those very hard learnt lessons right down to their very foundations.” He promises.

“Iris my love, you are the hardest thing, I’ve ever had to resist.” He tells.

Swooping upwards to kiss at her cheek. Sighing in need against her hot warm skin. If he indulges the temptation of tasting her blood. He doesn’t even want to fathom what the raw animal in him will do to her. Such debauchery he’d surely scandalise her innocence to tipping point.

He will have her on their wedding night and not a second before.

Though the rogue in him does think how goddamn glorious it would be to have her on that bed of hers right now, torn out of that gown. Screeching his name for the whole house to hear. And they can listen to her rapture and whimper, and beg and writhe under the man who really does love her.

Bite her neck as he pumps deep into her slick heat. Gather up every groan as she opens those sweet pink thighs for him and claws at his back. He’d kiss her neck until she yanks her fingers into his hair and tugs. Opens that sweet songbird mouth and calls for him in her bliss, with that ambrosial voice.

He holds the backs of her hips and strokes the silk there with arcing curves of his thumbs. Drawing shapes on that stiff silk.

“I must tell you-“ She starts. “I never was much good at resisting you either. Even after knowing what you are. It shocked me I won’t deny. But it somehow in its twisted way, it made all the sense in the world. It didn’t alter me for my knowledge of it. It didn’t even begin to change the severity my feelings for you.” She tells him. Reaching up and stroking along the handsome plain jaw.

Wholly, un-confinably, remarkably handsome.

“My love-“ He begins warmly. “If I had to, I would throw you over my shoulder to carry you up the aisle to marry me. Even if I had to tear you from your bed and steal you away in the dark of night to be mine. I would have done it. Because _this_ , what we share, it cannot and will never be undone. Can never be ignored.” He promises her.

“Vampires love more deeply than any mortal longing. What I feel for you, it is not fickle. It will never fade. Never wane. We love each other and that will last for as long as we exist on this earth. I thought I had better edify you with these clear facts about my nature, before we are to be bound in matrimony.” He pledges to her. Declaring his undying devotion to her.

Iris rather wants to swoon into his chest - if she had ever been inclined to be a swooning sort of woman. Instead she just beams. A smile so glad it touches the frosty barren place his dead heart inhabited.

“These last few hours will be such a torture.” She comments seriously. But giddy. So giddy it felt like her sides would split open. And molten happy gold would pour out.

His eyes turn promiscuous. As does his domineering smile.

“I can safely offer you nothing but pleasure once the torture is done.” He filthily promises.

She blushes. He wants to lift her up and devour her in a kiss again. Taste those saccharine sweet lips in an animalistic kiss. He savours holding her instead.

Tomorrow he can let the animal roam free over his delicate dove. Tonight is the last night it must be caged.

“Not long to wait now. The last of my household servants left today. I sent Jomar and Jones off to London to make passage to France. Erland and Kana remain to take us to Scotland with one driver, and the coach.” He tells.

She liked that he’s bringing Erland to their elopement. It’s quite fitting when the creature loves her almost as much as he does.

“Then it’s just us. Riding into the wild of the Highland. Roaming over the Scottish moors, and glens and lochs, as a Lord and his Lady.” He paints a vivid picture for her.

She sighs a smile. “Us, has never sounded so splendid.” And she beams brighter than the sun.

He clutches her close for another kiss before he slips away.

The appointed hour loometh. And Iris won’t sleep a wink for thinking of his sharp smile or those savage eyes.

She eventually dreams. And thinks of kissing his soft plush lips once more. Like kissing pink rose petals.

The next time she will, they’ll be well on their way to being man and wife.

~


	16. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It's not the shade we should be cast in_  
>  _It's the light and it's the obstacle that casts it_  
>  _It's the heat that drives the light_  
>  _It's the fire it ignites_  
>  _It's not the wakin', it's the risin'_  
>  \- Nina Cried Power, Hozier  
>   
> I don’t know why, but something about this song spoke to me writing this chapter 🖤❣️ Along with “Running Away” by Maverick Sabre. One of my favourite artists of all time - go and check him out, he’s simply awesome.

  
Waiting was her greatest nuisance. She was on tenterhooks all day.

As if expecting someone to burst in and proclaim the true circumstance of her guilt. She’s peeking around corners and dreading every moment of cursed silence. Every lapse in conversation is a dagger in her side. She keeps expecting to be caught out.

By the time the evening draws in, she’s nearly apoplectic. She’s sat in the parlour watching the sky darken. And with every second of it blackening her excitement grows in her chest. Gestating bigger and bigger with every second she hears tick by on the mantel clock.

She hardly spoke through dinner. Just listened to her sisters usual fussing and Mama disapproving of yet someone else of their acquaintance. Iris won’t miss that.

She nearly leaps out her skin when Meg bursts in the clattering dining room door without warning, with a note to hand her father. A missive from the farmhand.

Her heartbeat slows to its normal thud. She’s unaware that her father watches her from down the table with a casting silent eye and a look of concern. Mama and the girls were none the wiser.

Then they sit in the parlour as night is heavy and steely blue-black at the window like a velvet drape. Fire and candlelight cloaks them all as the girls embroider. Mama reads a novel, and father sits behind the spread wall of his paper.

Iris takes a moment to look around at them.

She catches her fathers eye as he turns the page over in his papers. He gives her a fleeting smile that passes the time of day. She watches the way the ochre of the flames in the half blade off the lense of his reading glasses. He returns to his pages.

She’ll miss his silent sympathy. His calm presence was a balm she doesn’t know how she can be without.

She looks across at her vain, silly simpering sisters. She’s astonished to find that she will miss them too.

She’ll miss their gossiping and - amazingly - the screeching matches that erupt over who gets to wear their new bonnet or who gets the silk slippers. Or Iris’s pretty pieces of jewellery. Apart from two very adored beloved pieces she’s taking, she’s leaving the rest for them to scrap over. She smiles thinking on it.

It’s odd to think she’ll be in Bavaria. Living in a castle as a Lady to Lord Ren. And she’ll think of home, and she’ll grin, wondering if her vapid sisters will be fighting tooth and claw - having a tug of war - over her earrings or her pearl clasp bracelet.

She’ll miss Flora’s fiery head. In both temper and colouring. How bravely she defends her poor choices in various men of the militia. Then loves a completely different one the next day. She’ll miss how she always puts a pouch of dried flowers on Iris’s pillow when she picks too many - she always picks too many.

And Posy. Posy and her dreadful sweet tooth. How she always gave Iris heaps of her favourite pudding even though mama insisted she didn’t want her eldest getting too plump. Posy scraped it all onto Iris’s plate when her head was turned. Even if it was her sisters favourite.

And even though the way she borrows her books and dog ears the pages makes iris grit her teeth - she’s going to miss that dreadfully. She’ll see some plain unspoiled page corner in a book and her heart will pang and ring, sobbing, and longing for home.

Such longing.

Yearning for her squabbling siblings. For the sight and scent of her father’s study. For her tribe, where she has belonged for all these three and twenty years of her life. She’s sad that she can’t seem to belong here anymore. That’s one thing that causes her grief her about this arrangement. She must be apart from the three people she loves most.

She isn’t sorry to be leaving. Running away and absconding like a thief in the night. She can’t deny that this is her golden chance to escape. Flee from the life that drowned her.

This is her chance to share in a soul shaking love. One that’s seared her devotion to Kylo right down into the marrow of her bones. Scored his name on her heart in bleeding letters. She’s forever devoted. In a way none of them can yet - or will ever - understand.

She hopes in time, they will forgive her. That their leniency will outweigh the scandal and betrayal of her actions.

She casts a glance across to her mother where she silently reads her novel. No affection springs to mind.

Perhaps if she’d loved her daughter more, Iris could hate her less. If she’d even been affectionate instead of plotting. As it stands selling her eldest like a broodmare to matrimony, didn’t encourage anything for Iris beyond resentment. She was in a loveless unhappy marriage and she has no qualms about seeing her eldest shoehorned into something exactly the same. That is unforgivable in Iris’s mind. To experience the trials of such a match for years - and to then glean no lessons from it. It’s cruel.

And all for her want of connection-

Iris refocuses on her embroidery hoop. Stabbing thread harshly through the muslin and looping it through. She works diligently until the fire starts to die down. Father retires to bed. Watching his eldest with sparkling green eyes as he quits the room. Iris is preoccupied looking into her lap at her sewing.

She too heads for bed. Feigning tiredness even though she’s never been more wired. Never been so wide awake. And she was trying not to do anything out of the ordinary as per her usual routine.

She walks past her mothers and her sisters with a lump in her throat. Committing the last few scraps of moments of them to memory. “Goodnight Flora, Posy. Goodnight Mama.” She says simply as she crosses the room.

They call affable words her way. Mother opts for a single word in passing. “Night.”

Iris wonders if she’ll realise one day that would be the last words she ever spoke to her.

She opens the parlour door and slips out. The fire in the foyer hearth crackles. She sees father is in his study. Judging by the slithering glow of candlelight under the door.

She so badly wants to rush in and sob her goodbyes into his chest. Cry that she doesn’t understand how he could’ve sat there and watches Mama push and shove and pummel her around. She’ll never understand - but all the same, that doesn’t stop her from loving him dearly.

She thinks better of it. Climbs the stairs for bed. Confines herself in her dark bedroom. And then comes the true test of her bravery. She has to wait.

And wait and wait. And listen. Hearing as the whole house slowly drifts to dark. To sleep. For everyone to take to their beds.

She can’t read a novel. She can barely stand sitting still. She sits by the fire. Watching the door. Her bag was packed hours ago. Her meagre clutch of possessions. Some loved items and a couple of her favourite dresses and chemises.

She had penned a note for her family explaining every detail of her reasons for leaving. She left a separate letter for a Hux. Though he’ll probably cast it in the fire when he hears the news.

She’ll be leaving the heirloom engagement ring sat on top of it. Leaving the two ruinous sheets of paper on the end of her bed. Waiting for tomorrow. When it’s discovered she is gone.

Her bag sits by her feet. Along with her coat. She sits in the dark like a lonely widow and lets the amber glow of the fire die.

She’s already laced into her new wool lined boots. She wore two sets of stockings and her heaviest chemise.

She’s in a thick ruby wool dress that will be adequate for travelling. It’s rather a plain gown but it’s warm - he had said to dress warm.

She puts her hair into a free loose bun at the nape of her neck. Tied back with a snip of gold muslin. Her skirts will wrinkle in the coach but she doesn’t care about such a thing. She probably looks dishevelled and not at all pretty. But she cares not-

Everything is ready. Now there is only noiselessness. And anticipation

She hears her sisters dainty thumping treads. And then mothers stern steps. And then Meg and Julia gabbing about something, a man most likely, as they extinguish the candles on the landing and all over the walls and hallways. Putting the whole house into thick dull silence and darkness. Putting the day to rest.

She listens to their footsteps creak and creep up the attic stairs. The door closing in their wake.

Iris crosses to her door and opens it a crack. Peering out she can see nothing but the dull moonlight striping from the far landing window, across the floorboards. Silver streaks chase up to her door in the fluttering moonlight swaying in drips off the tree being fussed in the wind outside. Snow is starting to flake down onto the windowpane.

She shuts the door again. It was nearly midnight and her hour is approaching. She prays her bravery rises to meet it.

Father hasn’t come up yet. He was still in his study most like - she can get out the house without disturbing him. She’s certain. He’s dozed off in his armchair or got his head in his business letters and ledgers for the farm.

She puts her coat and slips her gloves on, she has second thoughts about her scarf and shoves it in her bag.

It contained her life, this travel bag, yet it seemed laughably light. And it carried everything she cherished. There’s something a little tragic about that, she decides.

She seized her bag in one hand, and her modest bonnet in the other. To disguise her hair. Should anyone catch a glimpse of her, out unchaperoned, at this time of night. If they recognised her. She can’t be too careful.

She steps to her door, bonnet and bag in hand. Coat on her back, and she stands there, glancing around at what’s left. She spied the two innocent squares of paper sat on her neatly made bed.

Such small things. And yet the words inked within those pages will alter lives. It seems an odd sort of cruel madness.

She silently steps out into the hall. Shuts the door on her room for good. Shuts the door on all this kind of life had offered her. She edges slowly along the floorboards. Listening to the clock in the foyer tinkle the chimes of the half hour before approaching midnight.

She wished she could give her siblings proper goodbyes. She thinks this as she tiptoed past their door. Her shoe creaks the whining boards and she freezes. Heart thudding up to choke in her mouth.

She feels horrified and sick, until her ears strain for noise and all she can hear is night drawing on around the stone walls outside.

She relaxed and crept further along the landing. The tips of her new shoes avoiding the truly noisy spots. She makes it to the top of the stairs and edges down inch by hushed inch. Glove skimming along the banister in a scraping soft hiss as she goes. When she gets to the foyer she creeps toward the door to the kitchens.

A figure awaits her in the armchair. By a dwindling fire.

Iris gasps and almost drops her bag. Her fear bubbled up and made her lip tremble terribly. She’d been caught out. _Oh god no._ She opens her mouth to speak but no defence comes.

Her father turns his head from where he’s sat fireside in his dressing gown, in his slippers breeches and shirt. Persian house slippers on his feet. His glasses were folded in his hands and there is a pensive weight on his greying brow.

“Papa...” She squeaks in a horrified whisper.

He eyes the bag and her coat. He is not a senseless man. He’s already well assessed what this means.

He swallows and rises to his feet. Lumbering up to his full, tall height. Pushing himself up off the chair by the arms. Like an aged old oak standing proud.

When he turns into the path of the moonlight flooded window behind him, it’s then that she sees the tears in his eyes. And ones that already stained down his cheeks. Her mouth gapes.

“Forgive me. I didn’t intend you to see me in this state...” He glances at her with red rimmed eyes. Raw and stark against the hazel bottle green of his pupils.

Iris is saddened for him. Turns out she wasn’t the only being in this house to cry alone.

“You are... leaving. So I see.” He comments offhand.

“I can’t marry him. Papa.” She blurts out in a hush.

“I’m sorry. I know you’ll want to stop me. That I’m ruining the family with reckless abandon. To convince me to stay. But you can’t. I cannot do it. I can’t walk into a life I will be leading falsely...” She tries summoning and explanation.

Her father cuts through her speech. Coming closer and clasping her hand in his. “ _Iris_. Iris my dear-“ He soothes. He draws both her hands into his.

“I know.” He answers.

“I have no intention of stopping you. I only wished to detain you for a moment, to give you my blessing.” He offers.

She could be taken down with a tiny waft of a feather.

“Don’t mistake me. Please do not think me blind to your happiness, like your mother is.” He begins.

She’s aghast.

“I have watched you for these past few weeks. Grinding your teeth and holding that tongue of yours back when that entitled boy makes a remark you don’t agree with. I have watched him belittle and ignore you. And pass you over. To treat you as no more than a fertile vessel or commodity to be won. I want more life for you, than his meagre offering.” He holds firm.

“He dulls you. My dear. And you are too sharp and curious and intelligent to marry such a mulish man, who would never appreciate what a strong, kind and capable wife he has.”

Iris cries.

“He already sets your jaw on edge, even now. I can see it. And I cannot, _will not,_ suffer the pain of seeing you trapped unto a marriage where your partner can never love nor respect you.” He tells her. “I know the pain well. It is not palatable.” He sighs.

He drops his eyes in shame. “I have not been a decent father to you. I have let my influence and opinion be set aside in favour of your being governed and bullied by your mother.” He bites out. His eyes fill with more tears. Voice strained.

“I am a coward. Iris-“ He begins.

She shakes her head. But he’s resolute to continue.

“No. I am. _I am_. And I’ve been weak. And what’s worse still is that I was a silent coward. I didn’t even speak up for the joy of my own daughter. I will never live that... _dishonour_...down. So long as I breathe. And for that, I am so very sorry. And you have all of my penitence for such a crime.” He says to her. Wringing her hands in his desperately.

“Oh, papa.” She cries. Voice no more than a croak. She throws herself in his arms and he sobs as he clutches her. Sways her into a hug and buried his mouth in her hair. Holding her close. He sniffs and sobs. She feels his chest bob with his cries.

“There is nothing you need apologise for.” She assures him.

Mr Ashton smiles. She was the sweetest soul under this roof. And he’ll miss her with every passing minute.

He pulls back and cups her hands. He doesn’t hide his tears. He doesn’t hide any of it and Iris aches with love for him.

“There is a great deal I must be sorry for, My sweet. I will live out the guilt of it eventually. So long as I’m contented that you are safe and happy.” He says gently. “That can be my saving grace.”

“Lord Ren is a very decent man by all accounts. I’m sorry I can’t claim to know him better than I do.” He counsels.

“I love him.” Iris says freely.

The first time she’s admitted it aloud and it makes more tears come. Father gives her his kerchief and tells her to keep it for the journey awaiting ahead of her.

“Then he is the most worthy and decent man living. Because you are every good thing embodied. And he couldn’t be lacking of those virtues either, or he simply wouldn’t be deserving of you.” He comments truthfully.

He sighs a deep breath. “Get out of this cursed god-forsaken village Iris.” He squeezes her hands tighter. Shaking his head.

_Be free_.

“Get out of this rotten bloody place and go to him. Marry the man your heart wants. I never did wed for true love, and it’s haunted me, my entire life long.” He promises.

She was the only decent thing his marriage has ever brought to him.

She hugs him again. “I’ll miss you most sorely.” She pledges.

“And I, you.” He strokes her back. Shuts his eyes and savours his daughter before she’s lost to him for who knows how long.

She pulls away he strokes hair off her cheek. Blinking in the sight of her face in the moonlight. For the last few seconds of her in actuality. Committing her to memory. For that’s all he’ll have of her soon.

“With you gone, I sincerely doubt I shall hear anything sensible cross your relatives tongues for quite some time.” He japes.

“Remark upon me in my poor state, once in a while, won’t you. And pray for my dear fraying sanity.” He sweeps more tears away. She blots them onto the back of her gloves.

“I’ll pray daily.” She smiles weakly. Bag in hand. Aswell as her bonnet. If that didn’t educate on the silliness of her sisters - nothing would.

He pauses to retrieve something from the mantel. She sees he clasps a little curved silver item. No bigger than a matchbox. Swirled with ornate silver gilding. He takes it and pressed it into her palm. It strikes a sudden zing of cold at her palm. She knows this ornament. It is the music box. The small Fabergé one that sat on the shelf in his office. His grandfather had imported it from Paris on his travels for her grandmother.

“I would like you to have this. So you have a piece of Ashton heirloom in your pocket as you go away to a brave new world.” He insists.

Iris opens the lid and the little while nightingale pops up, springing free to sing it’s call. She clasps it gently.

  
“I couldn’t-” She sobs. She remembers her sisters admiring it too. It seemed unfair he should gift it to her.

“No tears. My dear. No tears, I beg you. It’s yours and I’m bestowing it to you. I want you to see it and remark on those here at home, who still and have always loved you. Even if we didn’t show it as we ought.” He insists. Taking his hands from her.

She looks across at him. She’d been mistaken to think herself unloved by her parents. He did love her. He could just never bring himself to say so. Iris is awfully glad he’s taken this moment before all is lost.

“Go now. Make haste. Don’t linger too long bidding me farewell.” He offers. Walking with her across to the hallway leading to the kitchen. She tucks the music box safely in her bag. It chimes and chirps as she nestled it into her clothes. She reaches for him once more.

Iris squeezes his hand. “You have all my love. I’ll write when I can. Not for her.” She shakes her head, biting the word crossly. “But for you-“ She pledges.

“Send it to Mr. Grayson at the farm. He’ll see it reaches me safe.” He urges. She smiles. Nodding. Tears sparkling down her face.

“I’m sorry to say I will have shrouded this house in shame and gossip come the morning.” She frets.

He shakes his head with a fond smile. “We are tougher than we look. Never more so than when we are tested.” He assures. Such confidence in his Apple green and red raw eyes. She instantly believes him.

She throws herself into a hug. Fists a hand in his dressing gown shoulder and takes a deep breath of him one last time. Old leather musk of books and the sting of peppermint. “I love you.” She gasps with sad finality.

He nods. Swallowing a lump of stony sadness down in his throat.

“I wish you all the luck in the world, my dear _dear_ girl.” He smiles. Eyes wet again. He cups her face and admires her for a second.

She clasps his hand tight at her cheek. And then she lets go-

He doesn’t have the strength to watch her leave. It’s too sad. Too hard.

He looks away and doesn’t return his eyes until the latch on the kitchen door softly clicks back into place in its frame.

The air hums with the absence of her. He prays to any god listening to convey her safely into Lord Ren’s arms.

He’d accompany her himself if it wouldn’t be so ruinous to explain come the morning. Why he was out of bed and out of doors at such an hour should anyone wish to seek after him. And she’ll move quicker without his old legs slowing her down.

He turns his eyes up to the snowy swirled heavens. And wills for her to have a better life than the one he could offer her here. He hopes he can see her again one day. When all this has passed. The hope for her is his salvation.

She scarpers across the moonlit lawn. Grass cold and crunching with frost under her feet. Snow is beading gently out the sky.

The clear moon of earlier has been replaced by chowder thick clouds. The cold wraps around her in a harsh biting embrace. Stinging at her exposed skin and making her hurry along all the more.

She takes the back lane to the woods. She didn’t wish to risk walking out in full view of the front of the house, down the drive. The road is pale with ice and dusted with snow. Icing sugar powder of it spills over her shoes.

The woods are already thick with it. Black trunks loom thin and warped; born out the white blanket of the ground. The tips of the trees blaze with flakes caught between them. Flecking the leaves.

She crunches her way along the lane. Her stride was something between a skip and scurry. Breath ghosting up in the air and her heart rattling in her ears. Her lungs sting and burn dry with cold as her breath drags into her body.

She cuts through the woods. Afraid her interlude with her father has made her late, and now Kylo would be worried she’d snubbed him.

She runs quick through the trees. Snapping slushing and scuffing twigs, frost and snow underfoot. Cold sneaks up her skirts where she holds them up to run but she doesn’t care- doesn’t even notice.

The trees are so gathered, that the branches rip at her skin as she sprints through them. Tears at her hair and her clothes. Snags are her and her cheeks sting. She bats away the grabbing things. They were like hands trying to tug her back. Trying to keep her tamed. To root her to this place. She’s having none of it.

Her hair got tangled in the snatching trees too. Pulls and only when she feels loose strands lap at her neck does she realise that the muslin had been torn and ripped right out. She presses onwards.

Her face stings and her eyes stream with cold. She comes up the lane that leads her to the church. Gnarled and slanted stubby shapes of the mossy gravestones are fog grey against the snow and the dark. Broken teeth of them rearing like lumpy beasts up out the snow. She throws the church gate open. Doesn’t care that it creaks. She runs up the worn grass path shoes scuffing at the pristine falling snow.

She comes out into the code of woods the other side of the church. The thing emerged out the snow with shimmering silver stone and the slate of its roof is edged with white where flakes settle. Oozing between the cold stony cracks.

The stained glass windows look dead and dull. The colours murkier in the dark. Smoky black and bleeding crimson staining the glass. The whites of the painted saints eyes seem to be arcing and watching over her in derisory disappointment.

She doesn’t glance back. She makes for the woods where she knows he’ll be waiting. She holds her skirts and she laughs as she runs. Her lungs puffed dry and freezing. But she’s so giddy she feels like her sides will split. Her cheeks ache from smiling. Not far to tread now. The cyclops of the moon hiding behind murky clouds watches her too. Silently keeping her secret.

She clears the worst of the trees and her heart soars when she sees a stark black shape of a coach up ahead. With an equally as tall dark haired man. His back to her as he stands in the snow. Head bowed down in his hands. Hair ruffled and dotted with flecks of it.

She presses a hand to her tummy where she suspects she now has a stitch. Because it simply feels so stupid - the amount of love and bliss thats coursing through her blood.

Kylo is outside the coach, of course he is. He’s much the same as her. He can’t sit still.

The gigantic elegant thing that will convey them to the Highlands set by the edge of the snowy muddy road. He’s pacing on it. Horses stamping in the cold. A shivering driver bundled up in pelts and thick coats.

He’s on the painful knifes edge of fretting. She’s not here yet. And it’s well past midnight. He’s worn circles in the snowy road. His coat heavily lapping and catching at his calves. The cold doesn’t bother him. Doesn’t touch him. He’s wearing a white shirt with the collar left undressed and pulled open.

It spills down his marble carved chest. Revealing him to the dark bitter woods and the snow.

He keeps bringing his silver pocket watch to hand - she’s ten minutes delayed. He watches the eleventh minute tick over.

His mind runs with the possibilities. She could’ve fallen and broken something in her haste.

She might’ve been discovered sneaking out and her mother tied her down, locked her in her bedchamber and threw away the key for good measure. His brain bubbles with mania and panic at the possibilities that could keep her from him.

He turns another circle and scans the horizon again. Sharp eyes not missing a thing. A cold breeze shudders across him from up the road. He stops dead in his tracks. That scent.

That was her. She was here.

He whips around, hands falling by his sides. Just in time to see her emerge quickly from the misty white of the woods.

Clad in her blue coat and a red dress. Her bag in hand. Her hair loose, curling and spilling over her shoulders. Cheeks are red and icy cold. Stung by the wind.

She’s never looked more lovely. So wild and free. _And all his._

Her smile grows so great. As does his. She slows to a stop. Panting for breath that she’ll never catch. Not now. Not with him stood there looking all dashing.

Iris hikes her skirts and coat up, and runs straight to him and she’s no shame about it either.

She drops her bag on her way to him, uncaring for its contents. He meets her halfway. Their bodies clash in such a tempest of love. 

She throws herself into his chest and he hauls her up so her feet don’t touch the ground. His strength was always so vastly great and he shows it in the way he lifts her so easily. Cradles the precious small weight of her in his big arms.

They collapse into glad sighs and she strokes her hand over his hair. Smiling out in bliss as she holds the back of his head. He clutched her back and her hair and buried his face in the crook of her cold neck. It delights and thrills her and she can’t conceive she can deserve so much happiness-

He sighs into her neck. Smiling into her skin. He draws back and looks right at her beautiful cold-kissed complexion. “Ready for this adventure? Lady Ren...” He asks. Cupping her cheek and most of her jaw.

“Wholeheartedly.” She answers.

He plucks a soft lingering kiss at her cheek and sets her down. Scoops up her bag and her hand and leads her through the crunching snow into the coach.

He opens the door for her and she clambers in. Erland snorts and shifts and stamps at her even from up the front of the carriage. Determined to have his share - he was such a diva he could never be left out.

“She’s coming with us, you great big fool.” Kylo comments to his horse. Iris laughs at their exchange as she settles herself in the plush velvet lined carriage.

Scarlet draping over every inch of it. A watery patch of moonlight slanted and cast down from the windows in the doors. She scoots across the bench for Kylo to sit next to her. He then commands his driver to set off.

Pelts and blankets and garnet silk brocade bolster-cushions line the seat opposite. He’s stuffed it with comforts for her. There’s a basket hamper of food and bottles of drink and a stack of leather bound books. She requires rest and sustenance. He seldom does. Not more than a handful of hours per night. But he’ll enjoy slumbering next to her.

Kylo shuts the door after himself. A gust of snow blooms with the force of it. Puffing into the velvet space. They are quite alone. And the carriage lurches off into that snowy dark midnight. Their new life together begins.

He greets her properly. Makes sure she’s snug in pelts and blankets and tips her face up to his by the chin to kiss her again. Her face pulls into an expression of agonised bliss. Tugs her closer closer closer.

  
  
Wraps his fingers around the back of one hip. Slithered his fingers between her coat and her dress.

He nudges her jaw out his way with a cheeky smile and shoved his nose into her hair to push it aside, nips and nibbles sucking teasing kisses down her neck that makes her shiver. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long. You’ve no idea how long I’ve been dying to kiss your soft neck.” He grumbles.

He sucks an open mouthed kiss over her pulse and she moans and pants his name. Fingers trapping into the blankets as she says his name like she’s chiding him. They can both feel the desire marching over every vertebrae of her spine.

She shivers. _God that felt good._ Made her weak. Made her eyes roll back.

“ _Oh_ kylo.” She moans. Her toes curl with the sheer raw power of his seductive kisses.

He finds her left hand on her lap and strokes the empty space on her fourth finger.

“Now. I think I had better make this elopement of ours authentic. Had I not?” He smirks. Reaching for his coat pocket.

Then he’s drawing something small out the shadow coloured wool. Her lips part in a smile when he snaps open a small blue velvet box. She’s blinded by diamonds and sapphires.

A cluster of them all crowning a gold band which is set with more gems. Two sapphires surround a large round diamond. Rounded and sparkling gems.

He’s watching her carefully - with a smug expression taking over him as he plucks the ring out its silken nest and slips off her glove slowly, then slots it up onto her finger. It glides on and sits perfectly. He lets her admire for a second. Before lifting the back of her hand to his lips.

“It’s too beautiful.” She comments. Amazed at it. He reaches for the curtain at the window and draws it back. Let’s the moonlight shimmer off the cluster of stones. Fractured light drips everywhere.

“Now that looks a worthy decoration to sit on that pretty kind hand.” He smiles. Before he frowns and turns her head towards him. A curl of copper and iron drifts into his nose.

“Dove. You’re bleeding...” He remarks. When he turns her face there’s paper thin red scratches swiped across her cheeks. She raises her hand to her skin and brings away a dribble of blood.

“I ran through the trees. I must have hurt my cheeks and not realised.”

“How could you not realise?” He asks her as he brings her finger to his mouth and naughtily, suavely puts that fingertip on his tongue and sucks off the blood. Curls his tongue around her taste to savour the way most men would appreciate a fine burgundy wine.

It makes something throb between her legs when he gets his lips on her. His eyes look like they could cut her with a look.

Her blood coating his tongue is too sweet for words. Sweet sweet bouquet. An agonising temptation that he only wants more of.

“I was smiling too much to notice.” She admits in a blush. Chewing on the inside of her lower lip.

He kisses at that blushing sore cheek. Pressing his lips to the barely bleeding cut. It should help soothe and close it. “That makes me insatiably glad to hear.” He smiles.

She searches for his hand and holds it. “I’m sorry I was late to meet you. I ran into my father as I was leaving.” She explains as he leans in to kiss her jaw again.

He pulls back and his face turns rather serious and stern. “He didn’t try and stop you?” He seeks.

“He could not stand to see me wed to such a loveless man as Hux. He gave me his blessing to wed you. I didn’t think I’d be walking away with that.” She tells.

He suspected there was a reason to Mr. Ashton’s silence. And now he knew; it was guilt. He’s glad to see she is loved from her fathers quarter. It soothes him.

“I’m glad you were able to make your peace with him.” He confesses. Holding her dear sweet little hand in his own massive grasp.

She looks up at him. At that handsome earnest face that is watching her so intently. So full of love and desire.

“As am I. But for now. Can I be terribly audacious and ask you to kiss me again?” She seeks with a grin.

She squealed nearly as Kylo tugs her tight into his lap. Folds her thighs over his. One hand covering her ribs under her dress. Fingers teasing under the swell of her breast. His smirking lips kiss and nibble under her jaw and she gasps in bliss.

“Thought you’d never ask...” He smirks and growls into the scorching heat of her neck. It tumbled right through her and she knows more desire is to come.

”And if you hadn’t? I’d have had to taste those pretty lips without your permission.” He sighs cheekily.

He swoops up and takes her mouth and she truly things she might burst into flames.

His silky tongue falls like cream running along her lower lip. She shivers at the sheer erotic desire of it. And this is only the start-

He’ll need to be careful. Or he’ll have kissed her lips raw by the time they reach Scotland. 

~


	17. Highlands; Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I very much promise you a second half is forthcoming very very quickly ❣️With a very tender wedding night... get clutching those pearls 
> 
> (P.s sorry for being a fic tease)

Everything was soft, and warm. Her whole being is snug and safe and lost. Completely lost to sleep and rest.

Mellowness spreading out through each of her limbs like warm embers of an amber fire or a splash of spicy whisky. As if she’s laying in a bath full of silk rose petals and perfectly warm water.

Best sleep she’s ever had in her life. She owes it to the influence of his being near.

Fur pelts and blankets wrapped around her as she’s slumbering on the velvet bench. Curled up in a swathe of them, Kylo smiles, she’s all bundled up, like a little burrowing bug. Her head slumped onto his strong shoulder. Fine wool of his coat scuffing her pale cheek red.

He had his arm around her back and every now and then leaned over and nuzzled his mouth and nose into her hair. Breathing in the plain perfume that he so adored. Kisses her brow. Hints of salty lavender and sage peppermint soap pouring off her. Her skin and her clothes all amalgamated into the encompassing scent of his Iris. The one that he never could resist. The one he knows so dearly by now.

He’s so glad she’s here.

She’s in his arms. It makes him smile he just can’t help it.

He slept a little - in fits and starts mostly. When she’s so warm and sweetly tempting laying her head on his shoulder how could he not? Nestles his nose into her hair and falls asleep too, with a smile on his face, and calm peace taking up his chest. Spreading through him like clouding smoke.

Every muscle in her body coaxed into that sleepy calm lull by a gently rocking motion that sent her engulfed into dreams, like a newborn being swayed in their rocking cradle.

Its the gentle pitch of the coach as it tumbles over rocky highland roads that does it. Crackles and jolts over the stony lanes that cut through the miles and stretching glory of the emerald glens and the heather strewn hills.

He flickers the curtain back from the window his side with his free hand, and milky sunshine spills gold into the scarlet cabin from a clouded heaven.

He peers out the glass, clouded sunshine snatched at his eyes. Quite a stunning vista awaited his attention. He’s used to fish filled lakes, mountain scenery and the lush impossible green of Bavarian landscape under a searing sky. He was made and formed and still sustained, all these years later, by bitter snow and cold rocky climes. Inbetween layers of sinking crushing snow and pine trees was he was formed. Moulded out of such a savage ground as that of his Nordic homeland.

Scotland has a hint of this too: a savagely beautiful terrain. A vast portion of its wilderness remained.

Hulking mountains, the glitter of a loch in the sunshine. Catching like a cascade of sapphires and diamonds in the sun. Dense forest woodlands and rolling hills crested with purple-pink heather. A native plant, as hardy as the landscape and people it sustains.

The sun chips through the clouds and dapples over the valley of the brown-tawny green mountains they’re travelling between. The loch lies spilled and landlocked in the middle. The sky is clear but the wind is howling and icy, and he can feel it’s bitter gale wrapping around the coach.

Scotland is a land he can recall very little of. His previous tours of England over the years kept him mostly in the southern regions. But he remembers some viking settlements on the coasts, in a time when his clans and kin ruled the seas. Pillagers, plunderers and warriors claiming the land for their own like a wandering pack of rabid dogs.

He remembers being at sea, seeing these shores coming into view. Cliffs clearing out of the misty horizon. Stood at the front of the langskip as it rowed him closer to a new land. Some slithers of his memory can still recall.

The woven tunic rasping his cold skin. The taste of sea salt crusted on his lips. Cruel heavy rain pelting into his braids and stinging his head like a thousand needles. The studded leather cuffs and tunic he wore cold from the exposed elements of a ruthless sea. His usual black fur wolf pelt lining his massive shoulders. He can recall how long his hair was back in those days. Braided and knotted and twined with silver ornaments. Kohl smeared on his already dark eyes. He made quite the picture of a savage.

He was on this island a mere two months before he sailed back home. And fate would set its hand on the path towards him being turned by Draegan during that portentous battle.

How different it all is now. Being here, in these very different, yet same, highlands, all these centuries later. With his perfect love of his life, under his arm. On their path towards matrimony.

However dishonourable their actions to get them here. He would’ve slaughtered the whole county if that’s what it took.

He strongly suspected her mother would be in such uproar by now, she’d send for the police or the local magistrate. He can see it now: some six-horse phaeton being governed at impressive speed, by a stony faced police duty constable, haring it down the hair pin roads after them. Mrs Ashton will have painted him the perfect black hearted villain of the peace. Seducing away her eldest daughter to ruin.

Kylo’s smirking at the thought. _How correct it is._ Except he will not be such a Byronic blackguard as to seduce her and then abandon her like a stray.

He will bed her with such fierce passion make her his Lady. And _by god_ \- this wedding can’t come soon enough for his liking.

He admires the scenery a moment or two longer. Before turning back to her.

He nuzzles his mouth to her forehead. Her warm creamy skin against his mouth and he takes a gentle kiss of it. “Dove?” He calls to her through her sleep. His voice a rumbling hush. Chipping through her engulfing pretty dreams.

Her eyelids flutter and she gently comes too - his mouth a loving press on her temple. His lips are a silky wisp on her skin and it makes a beautiful thrum of conscious delight run through her. He feels it pluck along every nerve in her spine. Like a knife carving and picking through stitched thread. His nearness undoes her so brutally.

Her eyes peel open and he watches the sunshine catch in them. Oakmoss and honey. “We are in the highlands?” She asks.

Voice eclipsed under a husky tone that sleep still clings to. He smiles at her. Tucks a straying curl of hair back behind her ear. Her cheek so pink and warm from her slumber.

“Take a look...” He gestured to the window with a casual nod. Smile glowing with love of her, in such an adorably mussed state.

She rubs the bleariness of sleep away and leans across him to admire the prospect.

The breath is quite snatched from her lungs.

She never knew the scenery of these British isles could differ. For years she’d been the landlocked country miss. So used to the frosted green-brown fields and flat valleys of the genteel farming countryside of the south. The unexciting stretch of her home county.

She never knew a landscape could be this vast. Such huge mountains with golden and green grass and purple heather crawling up them. So high they stabbed into the searing grey of the sky and snow dusts their tips where the icy wind blazes. She’s never seen such colour and brutality in such a vista before. It’s quite a refreshing sight to her innocent eyes.

She cranes her head to catch a glimpse of the loch sandwiched between the mountains. The severity of the grey sky fills the waters. But it still looks like a great stretch of Prussian blue ink. She feels like she’s seeing the world for the first time with wide open and educated eyes.

“Goodness...” She gasps in amazement. Kylo smiles looking at her sweet creamy profile bathed in sunlight. The clouds are roiling in temper in front of the sun, Grey and churning, interrupting the light pouring down from the heavens. Kylo suspects there will be rain soon.

She sits back and unfolds some of her cocooning blankets from her legs. She was quite warm enough when she’s holding his hand. Fingers sloped and tangled together in her lap.

“Whereabouts are we?” She enquires.

“Near Kinlochleven. That peak there...” he gestures out the window with a pointed finger. “Is called Ben Nevis. The highest peak in all of Western Scotland.”

“Without meaning to take a liberty; I thought we were intended for Gretna green?” She asks.

He chuckles and leans over to pluck a sweet kiss on the corner of her mouth. He pulls back and rests his forehead to hers. Nose nuzzled against her cheek.

“Take all the liberties you should like, my love. You won’t offend me so easily.” He tells her.

“I must confess I had considered that if your mother is hateful enough to send someone to stop our union, Gretna Green would be the first place she’d look.” He smiles cunningly.

“I thought we had better err on the side of caution.” He insists. “Not that slobbering hounds from the very bowels of hell could stop me marrying you-“ He drawls lovingly.

“But I thought it best to avoid a nasty encounter if there is one to be had.” He tells. “You don’t mind? Do you?” He seeks with a frown.

“Mind?” She repeats. She leans close and kisses his cheek.

“You could tell me our wedding is being hosted in a ditch and I’d still be delirious with joy.” She tells him.

He chuckles kindly at her sentiments. Smile crinkles up his eyes and cheeks. She wants to follow those sweet dimples with her fingertips. Like trailing well-work paths and lines and dips in a map. Skimming over roads travelled.

“I had planned for a little better than a ditch. I sought out an Inn that looked most comfortable. Rather rustic. I’m afraid it’s not going to be a grand manor house overrun with servants.” He tells her. Preferring honesty over catching her in a lie.

She’s still smiling. “I’m not a grand kind of woman. Cosy sounds wonderful.” She insists. She had no qualms about his doing or acting upon anything that could make her uncomfortable.

“I’d take a cosy wedding with you - over anything cold and grand and proper. Like my supposed wedding to Sergeant Hux would’ve been.”

She could see it all so clearly; a stifling preconception of wedded life.

A big society affair - Maratella and Mama would invite every old matron and stuffy Lord of their acquaintance within a fifty mile radius. Anything to show off the grandeur of the match. They’d be wedded under no less than a hundred pairs of eyes, and the odious, foul-breathed, Reverend Potter, watching them.

With a tepid kiss on the lips and duty done, the party would retire to a wedding breakfast hosted at Cavenham - Maratella would insist. They’d spend the wedding night there before setting off on honeymoon the next day. If there was to be one. Probably some boarding house in Brighton or something that wouldn’t remove them too far away.

Iris shudders at the merest intimation of bedding Hux.

He wasn’t repulsive but if his conjugal manner was as alike in every other cold attitude that he treated her. She was in for an uncomfortable procedure in consummating their marriage. It would be very polite, and sharp and quick. A fumble and an insulting rut and she’d be done with him.

He wouldn’t kiss her. Or lay into her with glimmering affection and wildly consuming love in his eyes. He’d do his duty and then she’s damn certain he’d have retired to his own bedchamber. Leaving her there, sore, bleeding and sticky-warm between her thighs. It completely crushed her heart to think that may have been her existence. Loveless encounters until she was beget with child.

He would never hold her. Never kiss her for pleasure. Never walk into a room she’s in, and not dream about taking her in his arms and kissing her like he won’t possibly survive if he doesn’t. He won’t take her hand and hold it the way Kylo is this very moment.

She doesn’t regret her choice. She’ll never regret her choice.

“I shall defer the grandeur until we get to Ranlor. And you will be cherished and spoiled and treated as a Lady should. As well you deserve to live.” He pledges.

Thoughts and the prospect of her new home fill her with giddy desirous joy. She blushes a little at the warm tone of his words.

“What’s Ranlor like?” She beams.

_Oh,_ they’ve had many a courteous back-and-forth in ballrooms with every matron in the world breathing down their neck. Here there is no pretence or cautiousness;

She needn’t be worried she’ll be remarked upon for gazing at him too long. For smiling too much when he talks to her. He need not show less than what he feels for her. Here, like this, their love is unconfined.

It’s no one but the two of them and he’s absolutely full up of delight to remark upon it.

“It’s the one place I’ve had that’s ever felt like a true home to me. The downfall of an existence like mine. I’ve drifted through so many fine houses and châteaus and dwellings. Such a rootless way of spending life.” He begins.

“You would not want me should you have seen where I grew up. I was raised in a dim timber hut no bigger than ten metres square.” He chuckles lightheartedly.

“I can safely assure you. That wouldn’t deter me.” She tells to the handsome man who owns her entire heart.

She tentatively reaches up to skim her palm down his cheek. Can’t quite fathom that she can touch him like this- adore him. Admire him. All those things she never seemed able to do. Now they are all within her grasp.

He takes that dear sweet hand of hers and holds it to his lips for a second. Kisses her knuckles and a shiver of delight crosses her whole being. Rubs his fingertips along the smooth pink oval stones of her neat fingernails.

“Better finding a home at last than years of living in a place that never quite agrees with you.” She tempers softly. Her whole happy childhood spited and soured by her mothers greed for a good marriage.

He feels that comment deeply from her. “She was very wrong to take that feeling from you. Of your native land. Your centre of being.” He explains. “I should hope she is paying sorely for her mistake of you, and no less.” He observed spitefully. And he means it.

Iris doesn’t blame him for it - rather she empathises greatly. She smiles in her agreement.

“I hope Ranlor Castle will serve well. And in time that you may think of it as your home. Because I would want nothing less than your being satisfied and happy with it.” He hopes.

“The way you speak of it- I don’t see how I could not adore it already.” She tells.

“How long have you been in residence?” Fully expecting his answer to be of a shockingly long timeline.

“Since the late 1500’s.” He casually offers.

“Ranlor was an impulsive purchase of land. I admit. But I was sick of war. Of moving with army encampment from country to country. Sick of living in dirt and wet muck and fighting. I bought it because I wanted to wake up each morning and be the master of the land where I lay my head. To know the view I wake up too, is the same one I shall be greeted with at sunset.” He tells her very poetically.

“I’ve lived in attic garrets, huts made of straw and mud, and postage stamp sized rooms. But by that same token, I’ve stayed as a guest of honour at Versailles. Lived with princes and kings and queens and been a companion warrior to many number of emperors in my time.” He offers. “But in Ranlor I found I appreciated having a place to return to where everything surrounding me is entirely my own.”

Iris is blown away by the stories he must have to tell. “When we sup tonight, I absolutely insist you tell me about some of the places and the people you’ve seen. I am my fathers daughter after all. I am an unabashed glutton for history.” She chuckles.

He takes her chin and brings her face closer to his. Melts their lips into a slow bruising kiss. Passion sparks at her skin and it feels like it bruises her.

“How can I possibly deny such a request?” He drawls against her lips. Breath rasping against her scorched cheeks. Her blood simmering hot under her skin and the smell of it is _beautiful_ -

“I want to know every intimate thing.” She begins. He bites back a groan. _Good god, how she’ll have it..._

“Keep kissing me like this Iris and I’ll give you anything you want...” He sighs in desiring agony into her lips and wraps his big fingers around the back of her head. Completely dwarfs her skull in his grip.

She clutched at his shoulder - otherwise she’s sure she’d simply float off up to the moon in bliss.

“Kissing you is more than enough. I am wholly satisfied by that alone.” She says when they break away. Not able to deny how alluring he is in this way-

Impassioned to the point of fever. His eyes as dark as storm clouds above them. Calls to mind things like granite, and crows feathers and black leather. Dark but light touches so deep. His lips are a raw sweet-cherry pink and he looks like the starving wolf about to gobble up a baby deer.

“We’ll be near to our Inn soon.” He comments. “We are but ten miles from it I believe.”

She smiles and lays her head on his shoulder. Happy to watch the scenery roll them by. Joining her hand with his again in their lap. He takes up a vast proportion of the velvet bench but she cuddles nicely into his side. He kisses her hair again and then turns and watch their coach rumble along the roads.

She could happily drift away again. The scent of him calmly infused into his clothes. His cologne and the soap and sandalwood oil he uses. Pine from the forest, thorny tumbling brambles full of rich, tart fruit, and an undercurrent of eucalyptus and mint. Rich delicious and earthy. And he is a man sprung from the salt of the earth. She adores how his roots are humble, and he’s come so far as to rise into a Lords title. It’s a quality she admires.

Not before long, houses to start to crop up out of this beautiful Scottish countryside. Low little stone houses and then suddenly a fine granite clad town is before them. A promenade of wooden shops socketed into grey brick buildings above. Full of wares and goods for sale.

It’s quite a bustling little town and the outcrop of the splendid mountains is it’s backdrop. The loch nearby for fishing. The land for hunting game and meat. This was a rich land in so many ways. Bursting with scenery and culture. So different from her sheltered upbringing.

The coach takes them along the centre of the road. Up the slope of a hill a little way. Past some more shops and dwellings and there it pulls onto a lane that leads them to a small brown stone building. Set back from the road with a swinging sign on a post announcing its name. A silvery depiction of an animal hangs on that signpost. The White Stag.

She smiles as the coach follows the curved road. Leading to a modest wooden porch. The place was tavern like in appearance. A small and long, squat stone building. Burrowing into the earth after many years of standing. There’s a pretty wilderness of garden surrounding it. Crumbling stone walls sprouting heather. Every window peers out across the wide plain of the glen before them. It’s an open terrain. Bare to the expanse of the elements. But when a place is so happily situated, Iris can’t think it could look anymore handsome.

The coach lumbers to a creaky stop. They gather themselves and step out. She puts on her bonnet, pulls her coat up her arms as he steps out. He turns back to offer her a hand down.

Their driver - a very obliging young lad from Hellford, Sampson was his name - was kind enough to see to their luggage. Even her meagre carpet bag.

He was a nice boy. Kylo had said he was eager to drive a coach, even in the driving snow and frost. Kylo wouldn’t want such an uncomfortable job but he seemed keen. He had a way with the horses. Had the touch with them. And Erland even likes him so that’s as high a praise as can be bestowed.

He was a beanpole lad with muddy hair and jug handle ears. Poky shoulders and a towering stature. Two reed thin legs shoved into his tall boots. Coat swathing his lanky body.

When they broke their journey to take luncheon at a roadside inn near Lancaster, and to feed and water the horses.Kylo insisted that they all seek some sustenance to keep them going.

The pair of them sit in the sunny window in the small, dim pub and share a platter of succulent honey roast leg of ham, cut into thick wonky sliced chunks of juicy meat, with golden roast potatoes and buttered leeks. Served with mugs of sweet crisp apple cider on the side.

The food was splendid and they smile and talk intimately - she found great joy in the fact that no one around them censured or took interest in them like back at home. With every pair of eyes watching permanently it seemed. They sit opposite each other, in the window alcove, around a wobbly pub table and she couldn’t be happier. Nor could he. The smiles on their faces reflect this fact.

Before they ate, Kylo excused himself and quickly went to the bar and said something to the kind serving maid. Slipped a coin into her hand. And came to sit back down next to her. She raised a brow. She knows what he’s just fixed.  
  


Sampson seemed most grateful that they sent him a plate of meat stew, roast ham and a flagon of cider out to the mews for him. The dear boy stumbled and blushed and wrung his hat on his hands and told them it was most kind when they returned to the coach to continue their journey. He told Kylo his last employer wasn’t nearly so generous.

Iris overheard all this as she stood feeding oats to the horses - even though Kylo told her not to spoil them.

Erland was shifting with excitement that she’s fussing him. The silly old thing. Kana was still a reluctant girl. But she seemed fond of Iris all the same.

Kylo smiled at the young boy. Told him he was looking forward to what the young lad would make of the stables at Ranlor. For he was pledged to make the crossing with them.

He wouldn’t be staying in the inn with them. Kylo booked the boy comfortable rooms closer to town. Told him to have a rest whilst he and Iris get on with proceedings of marriage. But he’ll be there at the weeks end to take them to the port to make the ship.

He gathers their luggage. Manages easily even though he looked about as tensile in strength as a lanky wet rag. Kylo takes her arm and leads her into the Inn. She’s getting rather used to the dim glow of these places of late.

He holds the door for her and she ducks in first. He has to swoop low to avoid stubbing his head on the doorframe. Her boots and his clack on the clean flagstone floors. Recently swept she guesses. Every table was wiped and adorned with little vases of wildflowers. Framed pictures and etchings hang straight on the lumpy stone walls. A fire crackles gently in the open fireplace. Horse brasses pinned to the bar glimmer as if polished. Thick plum and grey tartan curtains float poker straight on the brass curtain piles above each window.

The place is clean and tidy and not full of rowdy drunks with straw and ale spewed across the floor. She simply adores that it’s a tavern that takes pride in its neat as a pin appearance.

A few men sit around some tables enjoying a drink in the cloudy milky sunshine of the window. There’s some chatter and laughter in the din of the room. It’s beautifully warm and the air smells like ginger and oats. Something delicious being baked in the kitchens no doubt.

A matronly woman, very pretty with a tumbling shock of frizzy greying red hair greets them from behind the bar. A beige wool dress and apron tied around her middle. She was very beautiful in her late age. A warm face with ruddy cheeks and a complexion that had seen just enough sun. Eyes were a healthy moss green. Her weight lay entirely in her wobbly plump hips. She carries herself proudly.

She’s wiping down the pristine oak bar surface before her. But she stops and smiles when she catches sight of them. Kylo in all his sheer dark mass was impossible to resist or ignore, after all.

“Good Morning, Sir. Miss.” She beams and nods at the both of them. Handsome scottish brogue in her voice sounds kind. Iris likes such gallantry. Most people didn’t bother greeting young ladies when men were present.

Kylo smiles at the woman. Doubtless she was the landlady. “I’m looking for Mrs McCormack, I’ve written to secure lodgings upstairs.” He asks her.

“Aye.” She smiles fondly. “You’d be Lord Ren and Miss Ashton, I presume?” She asks. Looks to the both of them.

“The very same.” He confirms. Stroking Iris’s hand where it lay resting on the crook of his arm.

“How wonderful it is to see you both. I must welcome you the highlands.” She smiles. Laying aside her cloth.

“You have a beautiful Inn, Mrs McCormack. I’ve never seen the like.” Iris smiles at her.

“You’re very kind miss. I thank ye. I take great care to keep my threshold clean and presentable as possible. Everyone here calls me Mrs M. So don’t you be afraid too. If you’d come this way I’ll show you to your rooms.” She nods. Moving behind the bar and out to the stairs set into the alcove of the wall near them.

Kylo lets Iris walk up first. Of course. Watches her smile as she eyes the frames on the wall and asks the kind Mrs M about the White Stag’s history and it’s stories as they all alight the creaky wooden stairs.

He listens to them talk as they walk along a creaky landing with cream wallpaper studded with scarlet roses smeared all over the thick walls. Candles and heavy curtains in every window. Shutters ready to block out the harshest of Scottish winter nights.

Mrs M leads them to a door with a worn gold handle and opens it for them, guiding them inside. Iris instantly sees what he meant about the rooms being cosy rathe than grand. It is cosy and she’s take this handsome room over any gilded grand manor bedchamber.

The walls are tumbling exposed gold bricks. The floors are ancient groaning oak. Worn and bleached an old grey from years of heavy treading boots. The double bed is the centre of the room. A huge soft mattress and downy pillows, foot of it laden with blue and green tartan blankets and a sheep’s skin draped across the end. The mahogany headboard cresting in waves at the foot and the head of the bed is carved and ancient and so very elegant.

There’s a ginormous fireplace at the end of the bed, across the room. Already lit. Popping sparks and blazing heat out into the sunny room. There’s an alcove of a window seat stuffed with cushions and another wool tartan rug. Juniper green cloth armchairs reside by the far wall surrounding a small end table. The room is undeniably snug and home-like. Emphasised in earthy tones of blue and grey and green. Very much like the dazzling highland hills in which it sits.

Iris is so quietly giddy with contentment. She also spies a door to a yet unseen anteroom.

“There’s a private dining room for your particular use through here. Though you’re very welcome to come down and fast in the tavern if you wish. We serve three hot meals a day if you should like. Our cook can make anything you fancy.” She promises.  
  


Her keen eye then spots a crease in the bed linens which she frowns and steps across to smooth out. Iris can see she had a very discerning eye. Kylo lingers in the doorway behind them. Hands folded as he watches her take it in.

He observes as she walks across the room and peers through into the dining room Mrs M spoke of. It’s charming too. Red covered chairs, a long mahogany table. Candlestick of brass shines in the sun. Fire blazing by the dining table.

“Your washroom is just here too. For your convenience.” She moves towards a door opposite the head of the bed and opens onto a small chamber. Installed with a copper bath and a side table with a jug and basin and a screen. “Bessie is the chamber maid and she’ll attend ye’ with any water you’ll be needing.” She tells.

Iris loves it.

“It’s an exquisite room. Mrs M. We are very happy with it. Aren’t we, Kylo?” Iris smiles. Unlacing her bonnet.

He smiles at his intended. “We most certainly are.”

Mrs M seems fascinated with his first name. “Aye now that’s an interesting name. Your lordship.” She puts a hand on her aproned hip and surveys him with friendly curiosity. “I’d wager there’s some Scottish somewhere in your family tree wi’ a name like that.” She nods.

Kylo smiles. Iris’ slate and honey eyes glimmer warmly at him across the room in the cloudy light. Slight beams of it coming though the window are twirling lazily with dust. “There is some Norse I believe. Lingers far back with my ancient ancestors.” He tells their landlady.

“I would’na be surprised mi’lord.” She wagers with a fond grin.

“Oh. I’ll forget me own head next.” She explains. Rummaging into her apron pocket. Drawing out a heavy iron key. “Your room also has its own entrance. Though of course you may always come up through the tavern if you wish. Thats the key to door at the end of the landing there.” She points out the door. Hands the key over to Iris.

She then nods politely to them both. “It is nearly noon. Can I fetch you both a tray of tea? Cook just baked some shortbread I believe.” She smiles.

“That would be heavenly. Thank you.” Iris concludes. Setting her bonnet down on the bed.

“Might I also request you send your maid up to have the bath filled? My fiancée has had a long and tiring journey.” Kylo asks.

“I’ll send her up right away. Your lordship.” Mrs M insists. Moving to the door and shutting the latch softly after herself.

Kylo turns back to her after she leaves them. Iris has her back to him, slipping off her shabby blue coat.

He’ll have to get her another. She’ll be his Lady soon. She’ll need a finer coat than this beaten old thing. It gets stuck on her elbows. He walks across and aids her. Grips the back of her collar and helps guide it down.

She blushes when he leans down and holds her shoulders delicately as he kisses the join where he neck meets spine. A tendril of lose hair curls at his nose. He smiles against the back of her neck. Arms slipping down to draw her into an embrace. Big palms crossing at her stomach.

She places her hands over his. Savours the silence and the feeling of his solid comforting weight at her back. Enclosing her in love.

“You truly like the room?” He seeks. She conceals a blush - rather poorly - when she reflects that the bed she’s now looking at that they will be sharing. On their wedding night. He will bed her in this room and that thought makes her knees weak.

She twists in his arms. His palms rasp over her wool dress. Slides to her hips. She smiles sincerely up at him. “Truly. And I adore its surroundings. And especially its occupant at present.”

He smiles and leans down to claim her mouth in a sweet kiss. She’s so sweet. Sweeter than brown sugar and cream and tart fruit. He drinks of her lips like the greedy pillaging viking he absolutely is. He sucks and nibbles her bottom lip and holds her close when her knees wobble with it. Smiles and breaks the kiss remarking how weak his kisses make her.

“Have a nice long soak, and that cup of tea, my love. You’ll be stiff sore from sleeping in that coach on my shoulder.” He insists. “I may ride Erland into town to fetch a few things...” He tells her.

He had to take care of her, after all. He will not fail in that duty as others had. He was far too gallant. And in love-

She can’t deny how heavenly a soak will feel on her aching bones. And she did have a stiff neck- And although his coach was most comfortable, she is clad not to be in that jolting rumbling box for another night.

“To approach the subject not very delicately-” She starts. Wringing her hands for distraction. “When is the wedding ceremony?” She asks.

That makes him grin. “Four o’clock today. My love.” He smiles.

He wishes there was an artist here with a palette of oils and a bare canvas to hand; for her face is a picture.

“I had the banns read three weeks ago. Paid out a considerable sum to secure the church. All we need do is turn up to the chapel in our best, and the Reverend will wed us. Then and there.” He smirks.

Iris laughs. Smiling in disbelief. She places a hand to hold her middle. She feels almost faint with happiness.

“I think then, that I had better take to that bath.” She chuckles and blushes. He crosses back and kisses her cheek. Cups her neck and gives her a kiss that leaves her shivering long after he pulls his mouth from her.

“I won’t be long. Dove.” He promises. With one last kiss to her hand, he strides for the door and ducks out. “Drink your tea. Wallow in your bath. Make ready to marry me.” He smirks and winks.

Leaving her reeling with the force and memory of his insolently handsome smile.

The room feels doubly empty and so lifeless without him in it. There’s more oxygen without him. And she means that in a sincerely loving way.

When he’s here she’s aware of every smile, every move. Every touch he gives her is magnetic. She’s a bundle of blushes and nerves when he’s near. A giddy silly girl who trembles at the touch of his hand. Who hears the pounding of her heart hammer furiously in her chest when he’s near.

She does as he instructs. Mrs M sends the kind Bessie, the chamber maid, up with a tray of tea and then a big steel jug of hot water for her tiny copper bath.

She drinks the tea and nibbles a biscuit as she unpacks her meagre clutch of things from her luggage that Sampson brought up. As crimson appeared to be Kylo’s preferred colour; she chose accordingly. Hoping her gown wasn’t too crushed from it’s journey in the trunk.

She brought one good gown and a handful of plain cotton and wool ones. The one she would marry him in was a plain ruby-wine red. French Burgundy was the colour name.

It had a ruffle of demure lace stitched all around the scooping neckline and the brocade silk is gathered and stitched intricately at the back. Forming a beautiful slight train and cutting a severe figure. Her mother would have made a comment about it being a red dress. She couldn’t fathom the energy to care.

It makes her in such a passion she wants to pen a letter to her mother right then and there; tell her she’s marrying Lord Ren in a red dress. Like a harlot. See what she makes of that. She wants to watch her face crumble and her rage come snarling forth when Iris signs the letter as Lady Ren. See what her termagant of a mother makes of that...

She hangs it up to ready it for later. Smiles at the sight of it hung on the wardrobe door. _Ready_. As she should be- she hastens toward her bath.

The kind chambermaid was even so good as to leave a little organza pouch of dried heather and lavender on the side for her. With a little white pebble of honey and oat soap.

Iris catches sight of it as she unlaced her gown and rugged away her stays. She thinks it’s most kind of her to spare the expense of a little trinket. The steam of the piping hot water is muggy and sluggish in the air. Clouding up the mirror behind the jug and basin.

She sinks into the water. Lavender that she sprinkled into the tub spices up the air with its plain floral hint. She smiles gratefully as she submerged fully in the milky cloud of delicious heat. Rubbing the cake of soap along her arms and legs and sudsing up every inch. She does the same with her hair. Wets it and combs through a little oil. Scrapes her scalp with her nails and rubs the soap in and then rinses it.

She scrubs and scrubs until her skin is pink and every inch of her has been kissed and rubbed with soap. She climbs out and dries. Combs her hair out and rubs it. Repeating the process sitting by the small bath chamber fire until it feels significantly more dry. Ready for her to manage pinning into a coiffure. She could manage one on her own; Meg had taught her a few tricks over the years.

She pulls on a new chemise. A sleeveless one that would fit under the dress she’d chosen. She’s rubbing her hair with a flannel towel and takes her silver hair brush with her to go sit by the fire in their chamber. She brushes and brushes until her muddy locks look less and less like a wet soggy puddle.

She hears his treads on the cracking creaking stairs as he comes back.

The afternoon shifting later as the sun slides along behind the clouds. The door latch lifts from the other side and her handsome fiancé comes back in. Nudging the door open with his foot. For his arms are laden with boxes. His hair flounced by the wind and his cheeks pink from it too. His eyes were deviously bright with the exercise- it’s also because he’s caught her sat there in her shift with damply drying hair like some tempting forest nymph.

In all his dark coated glory, he completely fills the doorway to their chamber. His white shirt peers through the gap in his unbuttoned coat. A black cravat is knotted up his neck. Moulding into the stretch of his coat and his big polished boots peeling out where it ends at his calves.

Bessie comes after him. Carrying more boxes. Kylo gives her a coin and a smile of thanks. She bobs and scarpers quick and silent from the room.

Kylo looks across to his intended with a frown of confusion. Had he scared her? Or maybe she found their engaged state sharing a room to be shocking - some people were very strict on such matters.

“I think she is perhaps a little shy. And-“ she leaves her explanation there.

She merely gestures to how tall and big, and _handsome_ , he is. He made Iris tremble in her skin with his smile, and she was years older than the serving maid. To an impassioned young girl prone to crushes and passing fancies, Iris imagines he’s an Achilles heel of blushes and furtive glances. She thinks of her sisters’ reaction to him. All lashes and rosy smiles. Like gardenias coming into bloom for the sun.

He makes a noise of agreement. And that’s when he brings around his arm that had previously tucked behind his back. He brings around a bouquet of flowers. Tied with a grey ribbon that reminded him of her eyes.

“I cannot allow my beautiful bride to be flower-less on her wedding day.” He explains. Setting them before her in her lap as he crouched in front of her.

She is touched beyond words. She grips the flowers and lifts the blooms up to her nose to drink in their scent. Purple thistles, pink and mauve heather, bluebells and wild violets. Harebell and myrtle and a Scottish primrose. A beautiful clutch of green, white, purple and blues.

“They’re beautiful.” She comments. Stroking her fingers along the frail petals. Their nectar and greenery spicing up the air.

“Thankyou.” She sighs onto his lips as he leans in for a slow kiss. He stays on his knees for her - the only way she could reach his lips.

“I fetched some other things for you...” he explains. Taking her hand and pulling her up. He leads her to the bed and her heart thumps a tad faster - thinking they’ll be doing this later on tonight, in a handful of hours, for entirely different reasons.

He shows her the collection of items he’d purchased.

Save for two gold wedding rings - it’s all for her. She is speechless.

There’s three new exquisite silk and lace gowns. An entirely new Scottish-wool coat. Parchment, ink and quills for any letters she wishes to write. Some ribbons and hair pins and pretty silver baubles and combs to decorate her hair coiffures. Five pairs of embroidered stockings, and some round little cakes of oat soap.

Her mouth gapes as she looks to him. He shrugs and offers an explanation - Looking deuced too smug. “You deserve trinkets aplenty to remember your wedding day by.” He explains handsomely. She holds his hand. Quite stunned and not knowing what to say.

No ones ever told her she deserves to be spoiled before. It’s quite a new sensation for her to fathom.

“It’s not a day I’ll be forgetting in any hurry. Believe me.” She tells him.

She sees his eyes dart across the room to where her wedding dress is awaiting being worn. Hung on the door. He smiles fondly at her choice. Looks back to her.

“I can help you with your gown fastenings if you’d like?” He asks. Voice uncharacteristically husky.

She rises to meet his challenge. “If you’re offering.” She smiles. Bravely looking him in the eye.

She turns away and breaks the spell his eyes cast. Walks across and fetches her dress. Steps over to him and he encloses it around her after she steps into it. The fastenings already loose.

He slides it to skim over her hips. Up past her waist. Rests it at her waist and pulls the two sides together over her shoulders.

The way she tugs her hair aside makes his mouth water. Throat bobs where he swallows.

Lovers have done that for him before- countless times and countless lovers- But her doing this, nearly undoes him.

He focuses on his task. Tugs on the hidden laces at the back of her dress. Laces her into it, closing the ties at her shoulders. Eyeing the curve of it that cut around her lovely shoulders. Ruby red against her creamy skin. It’s too tempting to even indulge that certain route of his thinking-

He works efficiently. Fingers brushing the brocade silk and her back. The scent of lavender and spicy oat soap tantalising him as he laboured in this favour for her. He gets to the last tie and he mourns being able to be this close. Parts by stroking his hands down her back, the span of his fingers meet her waist easily. He kisses into her tumble of still drying hair. Inhales her. Cherished the moment of him being pressed against her back.

He called for the bath to be refilled when he came back- and honestly the chambermaid was too damn efficient. Her knock rattled the door and kylo blinks and nods her to come in. Their lusting spell is broken again.

Iris flushed and steps away to round the side of the bed to fetch a pair of stockings. Holding her skirts aloft.

The sight of the curve of her ankle sends his mind reeling into the squalid plains of Male frustration. He swallows and lets the maid fill the bath for him. He was in need of a scrub too. Not exactly covered in the grime and dust of the road but he’d relish the chance to run some soap over his skin before his wedding ceremony.

When he looks back to his beautiful intended, she is sat in the window alcove that’s stuffed with cushions and a tartan rug. Framed by sunlight. Hair turned into spun bronze and gold. Eyes sparkling like polished moonstone. She’s looking down in her lap, with two ivory embroidered stockings in her hands. Running a thumb over the garter ribbon. It was a soft blue. He likes blue on her.

He tries not to envisage that particular part of her anatomy that the stockings will rise up to, too much. He waits for his bath to be drawn and counts down the frustrated and rife minutes as they pass, like the truly impatient Lord he is.

~


	18. Highlands; Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is 15k words of incendiary porn ok 👀🙃 enjoy my filthy porn bunnies. 
> 
> And please please know that even though I don’t respond to your comments (which I really should honestly) they all make me smile so so so much and I’m most thankful for each one - be it one word or ten pages. Warms my heart ❣️Thankyou dearest friends. Each and every one of you

She’s still unbearably pretty when he returns from his bath.

That in itself was a pretty interesting venture, he was large and the copper tub was decidedly not- he’d had to fold double just to wash his hair. Which involves a great deal of cussing under his breath but he reaches his goal eventually.

He’s clean again, and shaved, and managed to douse peppermint oil in his hair and washes it out. And then scrubs up his bulky arms and legs with the sandalwood soap Wilton stowed in his luggage trunk for him. He dries off and ruffles his wild hair on the flannel towel. Pats that same minty musky oil on his cheeks to soothe after his shave.

Slips on a fresh shirt, tucked the tails into a fresh pair of breeches. He tugs them up to hug his hips and thighs. Slips his braces to snap in place, curving over his massive shoulders.

He creaks the bathroom door open still ruffling his hair dry - and that’s when he halts in his tracks.

She’s sat on the edge of the pristine white bed, facing the door. A cascade of scarlet on white. And her skirts and chemise and laced petticoats are rucked to her thighs, as she fiddles with tying the silky ribbon garters on one leg.

She’s leaning forwards and giving him such an obscene view he had to will himself not to leak in his trousers. Or grow hard as a rock- or growl too much...

He can see _right_ down her chest where she’s bent forwards. He can see her ribs for heavens sake.

He can see the pale globes of her breasts jiggle where she’s leaning over to fuss with the infuriating garter. That makes him think of such indecent things that no man should ever dream of before he beds his beautiful wife-to-be.

He thinks of how she’d look, how those perfect breasts, tipped with nipples he doesn’t yet know the colour of, would look swaying when she faces him, astride in his lap and rides his cock. Her little hands gripping his chest and his big hands cupping her ass- _sweet lord._

He grits his jaw and wills the thought away through some remaining scraps of sheer viking stubbornness.

He feasts on the sight of her. The woman he loves beyond sanity and reason. She’d done her hair. Dressed it prettily. Years of having maids hadn’t spoiled her independence. She wasn’t a girl who fainted into uselessness when she didn’t have a ladies maid. His Iris possesses a far more canny spirit than that.

She’d twisted it and pinned it back off her face in one of those fancy coiffures he could never remember the name of. Parted sleekly in the middle of her head with fetching curls framing her ears and nape. Secured in a plaited braided bun at the back of her neck. Draping low to her back. She’s slid a couple of flowers from the bouquet in the arrangement too. Dots of colour studded into her tamed muddy curls.

He swallows and steps further into the room. Smiling at the way she’s cussing under her breath. She hasn’t seen him yet.

“Oh, you stupid... silly, damn..” She rambled on irritated. Huffed under her breath. Plucking at the ribbons and not ceasing to give Kylo a most delectable sight of her wobbling breasts and her décolletage in all its glory.

He wanted to take a bite out of those delicious tits- suck her nipples raw til she begs and then he’d tug them harder into little diamonds with his teeth and the tip of his tongue-

“Some assistance?” He asks her. She startled up to see him stood there.

Hair drying limp on his neck and his marble ivory skin flushed from his bathing. She swallows because there’s a glimmer of bath water still heading down between his pectorals. Exposed by the undressed shirt of his neck. And he is drowning her in scents of sandalwood fused with peppermint. Collarbone still shimmering wet. Big chest swelling and dipping as he breathes. Warrior masculine frame of him so vastly large it made her feel faint.

She can remember being so struck by that very infusion of aromas the first time she saw him.

“This garter is behaving elusively.” She chuckles in frustration. Her hands still diving beneath the cloud of her chemise and the puffy red silk pooled over her sweet pale thighs. Soft and plump and they’d show bruises like blue violets and red rose petals blooming up in the snow.

Kylo’s drooling for want of nibbling those soft things and hearing her gasp and shriek his name.

He puts his towel on the rack slanted in front of the fire, to dry. And then he’s before her. Crouching.

His fingers tentatively touch to her left knee. So soft and smooth under his fingers. He remembers what innocence feels like. That certain plush silk of it.

“We are to be married soon. Made man and wife. Allow me to help you.” He says as he slides his fingers up her bare thigh. Her mouth gapes at the sensation. His big fingers slithering cleverly up her leg to find the two ends of the blue garter.

Her breath shudders as he adjusts the shocking to snap higher around her leg. She’s clutching the bedsheets now, wrinkling them in the vice of her hands. He looks at her and she catches onto the smugness in his expression.

“Making sure I do a thorough enough job as your dresser.” He insists innocently - about as innocent as he looks. Not at all.

She smiles at his manner of perspicacity.

“Because I’ll willingly get on my knees to help you out of them too. If I must.” He adds in a lusty drawl.

“I couldn’t possibly force such an imposition on a high ranking gentleman.” She sarks at him.

His smile grows wide. “If I insist in my most lordly manner. You’ve no choice but to indulge me.” He explains.

Kissing one cotton kneecap then moving to dress the other. Snapping the stocking up her leg gently and securing the garter ribbons in a tight bow.

When he’s done with his task, he takes the hem of her numerous ruffles and whatever else she has on. He pulls her skirts down to nestle at her ankles once more. Rests both hands on the silk of her knees.

“How are you with cravats, dearest?” He smirks. She smiles back. Unashamed.

“Out of practice. I’m afraid.” She tells.

They switch places. He sits on the bed so she can have a semi-decent chance at reaching him. Winding the long linen cloth around his folded up collar. Tugging on both sides as he sits there with his eyes glittering up at her; and his waistcoat undone, loosely hanging at his sides. The dark velvet draping over his strong back that she’s always admired.

She works gently. Tying and folding the cloth into an oriental bow knot. The ends of which will tuck handsomely into his waistcoat when he’s done.

They are so close together, he can feel the heat of her beating through her silk dress. He watches her face as she works on arranging his cravat. His hands don’t sit uselessly on his thighs. He holds her close by the backs of her hips.

“What made you pick this dress?” He asks in curious wonder. Sliding his hand along the silk. Feeling the shape of her leg. If anyone else had touched her that way - she’s find it repulsive. But the way his touch lovingly moulds the shape of her leg has her blushing through her allotted task.

A crinkle suddenly crowns the space between her brows. “Do you not like it?” She worries.

He tugs her closer so she stumbles right between his knees. Hands seizing the back of her hips. Dragging her in closer.

“I love you in any garment my love. I love you in silks and cottons. And I especially love you in those awfully thin nightgowns that always slip off one bare shoulder.” He beams. Her cheeks heat again.

“I chose it because I’ve seen you wear a lot of crimson. It seemed fitting and I thought you might like the shade.” She confirms with a gently optimistic smile.

He looks at her like she’s the most precious thing to exist - to him she is every precious and pure thing. Everything that lay undefiled and beautiful.

Buds snapping open on lilac trees in spring. Birdsong drifting across the woods on cold clear misty mornings. The smearing white clouds in a plain blue sky. Soft white petals on some exotic honeyed flower. Nothing but nectar and goodness and essence of life at the core.

She tucks the final knot into its resting place. The bow hangs limp as it’s supposed to.

He rises to a stand and without needing to be asked, she draws the two halves of his scarlet waistcoat together over his big chest and begins to button them. He admires her in this intimate moment.

Somehow her dressing him seemed a most intimate act. Medieval nearly, for a beloved to dress her companion so tenderly.

She buttons slowly. Aware of the way his eyes zip all over her face. Magnetic dark eyes that skim sparks along her skin. Touches her like flame. Chills her like ice. All at once: the sensation is magnetic.

Her knuckles brush his shirt and she feels the unusual warm of his skin where he’s bathed. She turns her eyes upwards and sees his fine fond gaze looming down at her.

He kisses both sets of her knuckles when she’s done.

“Isn’t it terribly bad for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the ceremony?” She asks with affable curiosity. As the clock on the mantel struck and chimed half past three.

“I think we’ve already endured the bad luck of being kept apart. A little more won’t hurt.” He promises.

Bringing her hand up to his mouth and kissing her knuckles again before he walks to fetch his newly polished boots from his luggage.

“If Posy or Flora were here, they’d be screeching that I’d have to wear a sixpence in my shoe. And pray I don’t cross the path of a black cat or a chimney sweep.” She laughs in fondness.

Two days without them and Iris found herself, ears straining for sounds of their silliness.

For their trivial screaming matches over clothes or ribbons or jewels. Or to hear them giggle and gossip about some plain girl of their acquaintance that they couldn’t stand; or yet another Captain in the army who hadn’t returned their letters.

Kylo detects the note of longing in her words. A very small portion of him was sorry to take her from her sisters and her father. Vexing as pest 1 and pest 2 were; he knows she’s never had to live without them before. It’s quite a new sort of heartache for her.

“Why don’t you pen some letters to them tomorrow?” He says.

“Won’t that defeat the purpose of hiding our destination from out the reach of my mothers claws?” Iris asks as she slips on a pair of slippers and laces them up. She didn’t want to marry him wearing the clunky leather half boots he bought her.

He chuckles lightly. Glad to see she doesn’t miss that woman at all. Slipping his feet into his sturdy, shiny black boots.

“Write her the Inn’s address and our room number if you should like...” He drawls lustfully.

“Try and see her _dare_ take you off me when we’re man and wife.” He smirks. Shooting her a far too salacious look as he pulls on his wool jacket.

Commotion outside takes her over to the window. She peers out and their very kindly beanpole driver is just pulling the coach up to the front of the inns gravel track. Halting the horses.

She smiles to see that Erland and Kana are both wearing bunches of flowers, much like her own, twined onto their tacking. And Sampson has a boutonniere on his black jacket. And his scruffy hair has been oiled and tamed and combed under a wonky sitting top hat.

He calls the horses to a stop. And their wedding coach awaits.

Iris looks back to her beloved as he smiles at her. She crosses to the table to her beautiful bunch of Scottish wildflowers, and slips out a white rose. She goes to her tall dark mountain of a man and slips the flower and some heather and pretty greenery onto his lapel.

Secured it there with a pin she kept to handy from her meagre collection of a sewing box. She’d stowed it with her, a handful of needles and thread and the few scraps of embroidery she’s actually proud of.

She also brought some pencils and a swan quill. They were the ones once given to her by her father on her twelfth birthday. He knocked on her door one night and left them on the landing for her.

She stumbled out of her bedchamber to see a stack of parchment and a pile of quills and a blue ink pot. So she could practice her funny odd little sketches of snails or cabbage moths or the monk jack deer that came into the garden. Her mother has chided her just earlier that day about her sketching when she was supposed to be learning the quadrille.

She’d cherished these half worn and well worn things. They spoke of a familial love and devotion that had always stayed quiet. She hasn’t known if it’s existence in her Father til the night she eloped.

She’d also snatched up that important ink pot to bring with her- it’s nearly dry and the quills are all ratty and short now. She’d have to husband it’s use resourcefully.

She wanted to do some sketches of the landscapes she visits. Delighted to uncover the different habitats and flora and fauna of the new places she’ll see; of ruddy brown and pink of Scottish heather, laying across the hills like a carpet. Of the thick pine of a Bavarian forest. Crushed with snow and the bulbs that popped through the snap of frost in the spring.

Memories of home play in her mind. Her past. But as she strokes a hand down her beloved’s chest and looks up into his face. She can only see his love for her sparkling like warm embers in his burnt russet eyes. She can only think of her future.

She looks down and twined her fingers through his. Hands moulding gently together.

“Ready to marry me then, Lord Ren?” She asks him. Not caring if it sounded trite or impertinent. They are both beyond those things. She’s stood there holding her bouquet in front of her. Looking like his life’s greatest desire.

He smiles. He can’t help it. His cheeks split wide. Divots and creases by his handsome savage eyes creeping with shadows

“I’ve thought of precious little else since I first laid eyes on you, my love.”

He kisses her then. Sudden but warm. Slow like thick hot syrup or the air of a muggy greenhouse on a hot day. Flourishes with heat and sparking glimmers of lust and wholesome, all-consuming love.

“I dreamed of the day I could say those words to you.” He smiles quietly.

Cupping her neck and tipping her face up to his. Feeling her soft neck in his hands that he’ll be kissing later. Drinking her smile in the way starving flowers drink in goodness from the sun.

He takes her hand and with no more than a smile at each other they walk for the door. They set off for the marriage that both their souls cried out for. It came deep from within. The calling of two halves needing yearning and desperate to be joined as one.

They set off down the creaking cracking sloped stairs down into the tavern. The sweet maid behind the bar, one they hadn’t met yet. Wishes them joy and blessings as they step past. Iris gives her a heartfelt Thankyou. And a bloom from her bouquet. Explains that it’s good luck to have a flower plucked from a brides bouquet.

They step out into the blustery overcast day. But to them both, it could have been a fine summer day for all they cared. Their joy is no different. It spills out both their smiles like gleams of gold or sunshine.

Mrs M is there too. She’s exultant to find they were here to marry. She’s busy giving their horses a handful each of fine Scottish rolled oats. But she steps across to them when they come out to wish them joy too.

Stating that she’ll see to it that Cook sees to a great wedding dinner for when they get back. And a fine bottle of rhenish. Kylo insists on giving her some more money for the room. He knew she wasn’t a rich woman. Mrs M puts her stubborn foot down; it’s her gift to the newlyweds.

She impressed upon Iris one the veil of lace in her hand for her something borrowed. She told her rather sadly that it was the one she married the poor lamented Mr. M in, fourteen years ago. Iris is touched beyond measure.

“Mrs M. That’s awfully kind of you... but I couldn’t.” Iris says. Clasping her hand over the woman’s own where she held it in her hands. The memories of such bringing jaded tears to her mossy eyes.

“Ach. Nevermind about my tears lass. We enjoyed many happy years before his auld heart took him. But I would like this veil to see a young brides joy again. And it’ll keep away the evil spirits.” She explains. Throwing the lace over Iris’s head. Stepping around to pin it securely into her hair.

The whole world, for Iris, is thrown into swirling white flowers and fog and silver circling mist.

“You look a picture my dear.” She says when she’s done. Wiping away a cunning tear. Clasping her hands together. Smiling at the sight of them. “Blessings on ye both.” She says with deep feeling.

“You are much too kind, Mrs. M.” Iris tells her. Not mistaking her compassion for weakness - as so many tended to do.

Kylo smiles at how wholesomely Iris attracts people into liking her. She took polite interest in everyone. And he’s no doubt that’s a fine quality she’ll bring to his title and his side as his Lady. She’ll be beloved by all - that was never in any shade of doubt in his mind.

He reaches out and takes her hand. She grabs it kindly with a smile that shines right through that veil. Her eyes slice outwards in their brimming happiness.

They step up to the coach and kylo helps her in. Sampson tips his hat at the both of them with his big gappy grin. Erland is desperately trying to nibble at and eat the heather tacked onto his riding gear. Kana wears it beautifully. Trust Erland to be the typical male about being forced into wearing flowers.

She takes in as much of the little towns and winding lanes as she can as they set off. The veil clouded everything into milky white. And she’s giddy to think that when it is next lifted; she’ll be Kylo’s wife.

The journey isn’t long. They hold each other’s hands all the way and when the coach lumbers to a stop at the small chapel. Iris feels so elated she can barely stand. Her whole body swims with it. Every nerve fizzing in anticipation.

Kylo helps her out and they make their way, hands joined. Up the granite grey steps. Into a tiny church that she can’t see much of, if she’s completely honest. It smells like a church. Ancient dust and flagstone and the tang of wax candles burning blazing dry on the air. There’s polished pews and a reverend and a few people scattered on the pews far up the front.

They stand by the doors. Facing each other. Kylo holds her hand. Smiling at her. They peer down the aisle and the wailing organ music begins. A reverend dressed all in black with a white cassock and a long creamy silk tippet stitched with crosses.

Her and Kylo turn forwards. Her arm crooked safe in his. And they walk slowly up that aisle together. Iris feels like her heart thuds further and further up her throat with every step. It’s choking her with excitement and she wants to curse and grin and laugh. Because she’s so hopping mad with happiness her cheeks start to hurt.

She coyly diverts her smile to her feet when they come up to the reverend. Reverend McKenzie, Kylo had told her his name whilst they were travelling up in the coach. They discussed over their roast gammon lunch in Lancaster.

He starts the proceedings. Glancing around Iris can sees few other men and women sat on the pews behind them. They were either worshippers or witnesses. She doesn’t mind which. She can only focus on the vows they are now pledging.

Before too long, the Reverend takes Kylo’s right hand, and her left where they are stood, and bonds their twined fingers together with the tippet. Recites an old Celtic verse in Gaelic about bones, spirits and blood, and two becoming one.

They recite their vows. He unwrapped their hands. And they each slip the gold rings up each other’s fingers. Kylo handled her fingers so tenderly in his big grasp. And the cool of the gold thrills her as he slots it onto her hand. She does the same. Takes the ring and gently guided it to rest on his big hand. His thumb knowingly brushed along hers as she did.

She lifts her eyes to his and his wicked loving smile makes her knees wobble. Made her mouth go dry. ‘ _You’re making me yours, Dove.’_ He leers at her with a lascivious look.

When the Reverend shuts his book of prayer, and steps back announcing them man and wife. Iris truly thinks her deliriously happy head might be in the clouds for all she knows.

Kylo steps closer and takes both sides of the dainty wispy veil. It feels as frail as if knitted from spiders webs, under his brute viking fingers. He lifts the lace over her head. Unveiling his beautiful bride; _his wife._

Cause now she’s got his her half of his title. His land, castle and money. And all of His heart and soul. Lady Iris Ren.

He reveals his bride. Watches her gorgeous face with those moonstone eyes and her sweet smiling rosy lips gaping open as she looks up at him. He cups her cheek and leans in so tenderly, lowering to kiss her. Unable to lose his smile. It’s right back on his lips as they pull apart.

He hushes something so softly to her when he retakes her hand. She didn’t recognise the language but she’s a feeling it’s his native norse tongue.

“That’s beautiful. Whatever does it mean?” She asks.

“Vows spoken in the tongue of my native peoples.” He’s happy to translate.

“As I have given you my hand to hold. So do I give you my life, and my heart, whatever that is worth, to keep. You are the one person unto which I will share all that I am.” He explains.

She can barely speak. Speechless with love. Tears glimmer in her eyes. She wets her lips.

“I don’t have such lovely words to hand for offerance. I only have love. That’s all I can boast to you. And suffice simply to say that I will cherish and love you with all I am, now, and for as long as there is breath in my body.” She confirms voice breaking with honest emotion. He kisses her hand.

He didn’t need fine words. He only needed her.

They step back down the aisle. He kisses her softly on her brow for that declaration. His heart leaping with joy to think she was now his equal in marriage.

He can recall his mother telling him about the day he’d find the woman he wishes to marry. All he’d feel. All he’d do to see her safe and honour her. He’d lay down his life for such a love.

She holds onto his arm and they merrily leave the arched little chapel doors with a spring in their step and rings on their hands.

Iris laughs when Sampson is there, throwing a handful of confetti over them as they walk out and down the steps. Iris laughs. Kylo watches the little shreds of dried rose petals and rice rain down Iris’s shoulders as she holds her veil out the way.

Raining crimson and pink down her pale shoulders. He’s introspectively admiring the sight of her. A quiet adoring moment of the groom to his wedded bride.

He rubs a thumb over her palm. It sends shivers through the both of them. Sampson takes off his top hat and sincerely wishes them joy. Nervously. Scuffing one boot on the other like a nervous adolescent.

Iris smiles warmly at him, leans over and squeezes his hand, thanking him for the role he played thus far in their elopement. Her joyous smile could warm a man to the backbone to see it. Sampson blushes at the attention.

Kylo realises he hasn’t seen that smile on her before; quite simply it’s her joy. Bare and brutal joy. he’s very glad to be the keeper of it now. The harbinger of her greatest love. And her smiles.

He sits atop the coach once more. Shoots up the clunky black thing like a lanky polecat shooting up a tree. Years of practice gave him that. Lord and Lady Ren take to their carriage and once more go back to their Inn.

Watching a winter evening blaze ochre across the mountainside. The plush heather turned amber in the wash of cold sunlight. The loch in the distance glimmers like a mirror shard. Drowning in the copper sunset. Eating into the earth like an avalanche of shining amber. Even the green-brown of the hills seems lifted by such a light at this ochre evening hour.

As soon as the coach enclosed them both, they had their arms around each other. Her drew her close by the waist and she threw her arms around his shoulders.

Touches his silken hair. Tugs her fingers through the thick black thorns of it. Anchors her hands in him and pulls him close- he’s doing the same. It’s like they’re trying to rip each other’s fingertips into the others skin. Sink deep and never leave. They kiss with violently bruising passion.

Kylo can’t help it; the beast is stirring inside and once that creature is let loose, she’ll know it. He presses her into the velvet bench. Nearly bending in half to drink in her lips. Wrapping his arms fully around her and pulling her onto his strong thighs. One hand skimming along the brocade fabric of her thigh. Feeling the rounded leg underneath beckon and tempt him.

He growls and moans into her mouth. She’s drunk on the high of it. Such animalistic growls fell out of him. It makes that incessant throbbing pulse between her legs.

As much as she loved the man; she also comprehended the animal in him. And she loves that beast just as much. She doesn’t know it fully yet. Doesn’t know it’s limits. She’s a feeling she’ll find out, later.

“I’m sorry it’s not the wedding day you’ve been growing up to expect.” He laments before crashing his mouth to hers again then wandering away to kiss her cheeks, her jaw, her ear.

She gasps and her toes curl as he drags those wicked plump lips across the hot silk of her throat. Shivers of desire have the full run of her body. Skipping along her arms and legs and she loses all the breath in her lungs.

“I grew up harbouring no false illusions. Only a meagre dream of what my wedding might be like.” She tells her husband.

“I only wanted to wake up, feel demonstrably happy. Put on my favourite dress and walk to the church, or Kirk, in this case.”

“A very pretty ideal.” Kylo smiles around a kiss to her perfect pale earlobe. Batting the lace out the way. Humming in bliss when he kisses over the hammering pulse in her throat. Delicious and beautiful. Ringing in his ears like Handel’s hallelujah chorus. Sweetest sound on earth to him.

“That’s exactly what I did today.” She smiles stroking through his hair.

Watching her snowy fingers slip through the thorny onyx shadow of it. Softly slipping through the webs of her fingers. Scent of peppermint oil beating off him.

He cups her head and kisses her savagely. Curling her closer with no space to spare. Pulling back to mumble at her lips.

“I know we didn’t take the easy route to marriage but-my god, Iris...” He growls. Shaking his head in sheer disbelief. Can’t believe she’s here. Can’t believe it’s her he’s holding under his palms. It’s his gold ring sat on her finger. Proud and polished as anything. Winking in the sun like some seer of a gold eye.

His thumbs reach up and drift across her rosy warm cheeks. Pink roses left out in the sun too long.

“If I had to wait all these thousand years to marry you. I’d do every second all over again if fate demanded it.” He explains.

Her heart simply bursts. She feels tears sweep her eyes and such intense love for him brimming in her chest - it’s almost too much.

“I don’t reckon to set any stock by fairytale endings.” She says pragmatically. “But I do sincerely believe that we will have a great happiness together.”

“I don’t listen to fairytales. The hideous beast never makes off with the beautiful maiden fair.” He acquiesces. Referring to her and himself, no doubt.

The beast never ravished the maiden fair either.

He’s sure his lore and kind were the horrible deformed villains of penny dreadfuls. Capturing virgin brides and whisking them off to their castles. The handsome hero always swoops in just in the nick of time. Juicy seductions thrown in and some wild carriage chases to boot.

“Highly overrated.” She kisses his cheek. “Better just simply to approach it as two people who love each other to a maddening almost nauseating degree.” She insists wittily. He can’t help but agree.

They kiss each other until the few short miles drop away and they find themselves pulling up to the Inn’s doorway once more. Back to that familiar wooden porch. There’s even a bunch of white flowers tied to the door knocker.

They leave the coach. Kylo swoops her down and bids goodnight to Sampson. Crosses to the boy and places a banknote and tells him to go have an enjoyable time at the taverns in town. He nods them a goodnight and takes the coach around to the stables outback. Iris tells Sampson to reassure Erland he looks most handsome in his flowers. It makes Kylo laugh.

“He’s a very pretentious animal after all.” Kylo ensures. It earns him an amused smile. They walk into the Inn. Her first. Kylo ducks in after her.

Mrs M greets them as they arrive. Tells them dinner will shortly be laid in their room. They slip upstairs and Kylo hauls her into his arms as she comes to the last stair.

Swoops her right off her feet and strides them easily to her room. She slopes the bouquet of flowers into her lap. Carries her over the threshold. Her tiny form cradled up in his big body. Safe in his arms. She hooks one arm over his neck. Curls her feet in as he manoeuvres them both through the door.

He stands with her a moment in the middle of their room. Nuzzles her into a kiss before setting her down. She stands before him and admires the weight of her wedding ring on her hand.

“Madness to think all it took was a few words and a swapping of rings and how we’re man and wife.” She says as she looks down at the foreign but beautiful ring on her palm.

Kylo grabs the engagement ring, cluster of sapphires and diamonds and big fat jewels, and slips it on her finger to join his wedding ring.

“There. Lady Ren. Now is that not a fine prospect?” He asks her. Looking at her hand.

She loves the sight of his too. Big handsome callused wide hand, branded with the gold of her vows. She lifts his big hand to her lips and kisses it. As he had done to her numerous times.

The noises and footfalls of a maid or two milled about in the next room. The dining room door pulled shut. Leaving them enclosed in privacy for now. The staff within now setting and laying the table for them for their wedding feast. Laying out wine, fruits, cheeses and breads and other traditional recipes.

“Hungry, Dove?” He asks her.

Savage dark eyes blazing with the orange sunset shimmering outside their meagre window that faced the loch. The whole hills outside are afire with the setting sun.

Apricot sun blazes into everything the blue coldness that the shadows doesn’t reach. Every tree coated and every blade of grass spun into fire. The heather turns into cascades and thickets of red and gold. Truly a landscape more beautiful than words could capture. Iris wants to take a walk and see some of it tomorrow. But for tonight; she’ll indulge in celebrating her wedding to her savagely handsome Lord.

With the fire stoked in the hearth, bathing the room in delicious warmth compared to the bitter cold outside of dying day. Stood there, looking at him, an enormous sense of calm washes over her.

The well-rested assurance of a happy day fills her with joy. An intimate supper and the knowledge of wrapping up warm and safe in a cosy bed with her big husband. She’s never known such happiness as this. She hope it never stops thrilling her.

“I am a little famished.” She insists pressing a hand to her growling stomach. After her tray of tea earlier she realises she’s suddenly desperately hungry. She wants to tuck into a hearty meat stew with thick wedges of still crusty warm bread to dunk into the rich sauce. She wants to indulge herself and have a glass of sweet red wine and savour how different everything tastes now she’s a freely married woman.

He opens the door for her, leading into their private dining room. The table is laid so beautifully it draws a happy gasp from her. There’s flowers in jugs on the table and tapered candles lit, hazy light from them cast on the shining dark mahogany surface.

The room is thrown into dark brilliance in the darkening day filtering in through the curtains. It looks like a violent Caravaggio painting. Dark plump reds and shadows flicker up the gold brick walls.

There’s terrines and platters aplenty on the table. Fresh loaves and fruits. It all looks irresistible.

Kylo pulls out her chair and seats her at the end of the table, folding the napkin in her lap. He took the chair opposite.

Pours them wine from the glass carafe. Ruby thick settled into both their square glass goblets. She lifts the lid off the nearest terrine and glances underneath. A simple broth awaits her. Traditional highland recipe of leek and chicken soup.

The next platter over is piled high with bannocks and then as sliced rustic loaf. Behind that is another terrine dish filled with some beef cheek and stout stew, golden chunks of swede and orange chunks of carrot in a bubbling rich beef sauce made with stout and a dark stock. The beef cooked until it shredded into tender pink strips. Cooked with whole baby onions and sprigs of thyme.

It smells beautiful. Iris could never resist the warming succour of a nice stew or casserole. Hearty food by far was her favourite; she didn’t care for the fancy extravagance of French cuisines. She far preferred a simple warming english fare. And she could tell by this table of comforting warm food that Scottish dishes are much the same. Meat and potatoes and a warming supper to soothe the soul and fill hungry bellies.

There’s a massive silver platter offering sliced mutton, ham, legs and thighs of roasted chicken and slices of rare beef. A cold golden crusted pheasant and cranberry and gammon pie, cut in two, sits next to the meats. A whole egg nestled in the middle of the berries and the meat. A heaped dish of potatoes and turnips, mashed and rolled with cream and butter and scattered with snips of chives.

That’s just the savoury half of the table; the other half is just as big. There’s oatcakes and cheese and fruit. Grapes and strawberries, and Scottish raspberries. Served with dried blueberries, cranberries and a little dish of salted cashews and pistachios.

There’s a jar of heather honey stood next to the oatcakes and shortbread sprinkled with golden sugar. And some dessert she doesn’t know the name of, layered in a glass dish. Silky pears, honey, oats and cream and a splash of amber whiskey dousing the layers.

She tackles the soup first and foremost; Kylo merely indulges in the wine and the spit-roast meats. “Mrs M did pull me aside and ask me what you’d fancy... I wasn’t certain what you’d like so I told her a bit of everything would suit.”

Iris ladles some of the chunky broth soup into her bowl with the ladle provided. “It all looks wonderful. And my appetite is vast. I assure you, I’m not picky.” She smiles. Pouring more of the leeks and chicken and crumbled bacon into the bowl in front of her. She reaches for some bread and butter.

“A vast appetite is a refreshing change in an English woman.” Kylo insists sipping his wine with his left hand. His ring catches the fires light. Fractures a snippet of gold light to snatch at her eyes.

Gently bred english girls weren’t supposed to have an appetite for anything. Especially not for food. Such a thing eluded to or suggested an appetite for sex. And that was furiously frowned upon.

“I was warned against such things as a young girl. Was warned that no suitor would want me for it.” She explains.

“Well I’ve married you for it. How’s that?” He smirks like a rake. Leaning back in his chair and sipping his scarlet wine like a suave god.

She blushes as she lowers her soup spoon and curls in into the broth. Swirling it around. Stirring the leeks and onions and the shedded chicken and shards of carrots and bacon. It’s got something sweet to it aswell. To cut the richness.

“And as your husband I admit gladly take the role of seeing to _all_ your appetites. Got to care after my wife now, haven’t I?” He smiles as he helps himself to the roasted meat platter.

The juicy slices of dripping roast beef make their way into his plate as Iris daintily sips her soup. The ichor bleeds out the corner of his mouth as he carves it up and lifts the scraps to his mouth.

He savours the wine and eats the majority of the meats. She drinks a goblet or two of the light Rhenish wine. The colour of gold and nectar. Tasted delicate too, of sweet peaches and tangy ripe lemons. She eats until she feels remarkably full.

She gets Kylo to tell her stories. Ones of his numerous past professions and the times he’s lived through. She asks about Versailles and what it was like when he saw it. He told her how everything glittered.

The people of the king and queens court all perfumed and rouged and studded with big ugly beauty spots. Perfumed powdered bosoms and made up faces. Ridiculous Cupid bow red lips on milky acid white skin. Clouds and crowds of aristocracy in their white powdered wigs and the woman in their wide hipped robes a la franciase’s. The men in their hose and dainty heeled buckle shoes.

They looked like a flock of preening pastel bejewelled flamingos to Kylo. Who was then a very newly instated Lord, unused to such finery.

Unused to the way the pink cheeked and giggling French girls - _demimondaines_ \- kept flocking to him and sipping their slips of gold champagne in their tiny glasses, kept trying to tempt him in for a kiss by batting their lashes and fluttering their fans in their faces. Shoving their sickly perfume stained bosoms into his chest when he danced. Their necklines cut to their ribs.

It was all so open. The sex, the lust, the affairs. So unashamed They all smelled like rotting roses and jasmine and spices and finery. It had been overpowering to a man such as him. All the luxury. The tables groaning with a years worth of rich food and meat and wine. The snobbery. It was a whole new nasty world for him to traverse into.

He told her the salacious story that a special type of gong would be rung at quarter past five, each morning, so that trysting lovers could return to their correct beds and spouses.

Kylo had wandered out of doors that night. Needing air. Admiring the moon and the stars and the palace rose gardens- Stumbled upon many couples kissing or fucking in the dark. In amongst the trimmed hedgerows and sickly sweet rose or lavender bushes, awash in a sticky navy blue night. Silhouettes of women on their knees. All this civility and there were men of the kings court, hunched over, powdered wigs askew, breeches around their ankles, rutting into their spread eagled women like sex starved groping apes.

Everything swam blue and hazy. He was sure he was drunk and roaming for a feast. Am eternally dark seductive midnight cloaked him and he always liked the wild of darkness. Torches blaze anxiously in the distance and music from the palace skips over the gardens, as if a flock of swooping starlings. The air is heat; and moans of lust. And shivering trees on a breathless hot wind.

Some plump French girl who fancied him, had trailed after him into the gardens. She had stolen a kiss off him and cupped his cock through his breeches and ran away giggling and moaning his name - expecting a chase as she unlaced the top half of her robe dress, shoved it down and lifted her skirts, parted her chubby soft thighs and offered herself up to him. Rubbed between her legs eagerly. Told him, and all but begged him to fuck her- To make her a woman.

He remembered how her skin glowed white in moonlight. The tiny teardrops of her nipples - red like pinkish blood droplets - erected upwards. Pointed to the heavens. How young and gay she sounded. How her smile and her teeth shone white and sticky off the full moon as she displayed herself up against a tree, with a curling jasmine vine strangling the bark against her back.

Stars, hot jasmine and rotten perfume sailing on a blue midsummers night.

He felt quite dizzy with it all - in the worst way. Sick to the stomach of this poncy lifestyle and gilded vain people.

He rejected her. She was young. Too young. _So young._ She still had youth on her pudgy cheeks and he was a grizzled old veteran running with seething hatred from his last love. She was a flickering flame destined to go out. He would not indulge this.

She cursed him in foul French as he turned away without a word. He’d come out for air but there was none to be had. There was less. Outside was just as suffocating as the baroque walls inside. _  
_

He was starving, ravenous, for blood and wild sex, but she was barely ten and six. Too pink and too ripe for him. He was sure she was sugared fruit out there, waiting to be plucked by another man.

But truthfully - the way her skin glowed silver white reminded him of Draegan and that thought made him melancholy and foul tempered all night. No amounts of cheap tawdry women and debauched carnality would solve his ragged heart.

He drank bottles upon bottles of the Kings brandy and went to bed alone. His bed was doomed to stay cold that night. An empty bottle was his curvy glass companion on the adjacent pillow.

He thought his may have been the only bed in the palace not occupied by numerous persons. He could hear footsteps, gasps and moans skating and sneaking through the fancy walls all night.

Iris laughs in wonder when he tells her that - he leaves out the part about the aristocrats fucking openly in the gardens and the overly amorous French girl. But he tells her about the palace in its heyday. It truly was as resplendent as everyone always rumoured it to be. It was staggering to quite believe.

She asks him about his family too. His real family. All the way back to the beginning - states with a sweet smile as she helps herself to some stew, that it seems a good place to start. Even though he’s got whole hosts of friends picked up from his adventures over the years.

Varied people from all walks of life are the acquaintances of his own making. Sheiks, and paupers and struggling Viennese artists, Spanish Kings, and French nobility. Starving soldiers and Medieval knights. And a demon lover and creator to top it all off-

Some were even the same as him. His friends. Some had died centuries ago. Some were mortal. Some were lost to him. Time and distance set them sadly apart.

They talk until the wine carafe is empty. And the dinner is done with. She asks him for stories and of course he indulges her. Once they are finished eating, Kylo banks the fire and pours himself a dram of whiskey from the decanter on the side table. Iris snuffs the candles on the table and takes the last of her wine through to sit by the fire in their bedchamber.

She wets her lips and wipes one clammy hand on her skirt as she walks through and sees the bed again. She wondered for a fevered moment what bedding a man like Kylo would be like-

She wondered what kind of lover lurked beneath all that civilised clothing and restrained manner. Was he thorough? Was he demanding?- She sips her sweet peach wine and tries to wipe that thought off her brain. Off existence. Off the very face of this good green earth.

She can’t help it. She thinks what their first time will be like together, there, under those crisp white sheets. If it’s anything like that intoxicating fever dream she once had of him. Of seeing them joined together-

That didn’t feel bad or awkward. Then they had melded together in that dream state as if they were one body. He’s cupped and cradled her like she was his sacred opus of worship. His hands had felt her- not to fondle, just to draw her shape and commit it to memory.

She wonders still. How it will be now the time has finally dawned on them. Man and wife sharing that bed. How will it be tonight- when they finally shed all the rules and politeness and corsets, and the dark unencumbered them from all propriety.

She prays very swiftly that her wondering shall be stolen away; and knowledge put there, in its place. She hates feeling powerless to knowledge.

She sits in the green armchair near the fire. Sets her wine in her lap. Tries to put aside how hot her cheeks are.

Kylo fills the dining room doorway. Shutting it after himself so the maids can come and clear their dinner service. Throwing back the whiskey in his glass. Scottish whiskey was renowned. A must. He takes back a big sip of it. Looking into their bedchamber at his beautiful _beautiful_ wife. Who looked white as a sheet and was radiating nerves out at him like other people could feel falling rain.

He could sense every frail worry-soaked thought.

The shift in her temper. It’s fraying and trepidation. He can smell it the pheromones in her blood as it changes, how that heats in her veins. Pressing up into her pale face. He can hear the pounding war drum of her mad heart. That heart he owned in full.

He’d disposed of his jacket earlier. Slung on the back of the bath chamber door on a gold hook as he went to wash his hands before they dined. He’s in a waistcoat, shirt, cravat and boots now. He sets the whiskey glass on the tiny table by the window and sits across from her to pull off his boots.

Then he crosses to her. Holds both her hands and leans forwards to nuzzle into her neck to gather her smile on her lips again. She pants shakily and indeed her smile does come forwards. Shines through her pink cheeks.

“Kylo.” She sighs all dreamy as he kisses her neck.

“Is that, Kylo stop? Or Kylo continue?” He asks as his nose nudges her jaw. Plucking red mouthing kisses down to her slanting collarbones.

‘ _Oh, Kylo, more.’_ She thinks. He kisses her jugular and drinks it’s pretty hum that vibrates in his mouth. Groans happily.

“I will wait if you wish too. I’ve no desire to force anything upon you.” He sincerely proffers.

_Oh,_ but she could sob in happiness. This man is too close, too handsome, and he smells intoxicatingly delicious, and she can’t believe he’s just offered something so timid and tender she never thought she’d hear, coming from her husband.

“I don’t want to wait-“ She manages to bravely state. He smiles. “I just wish I knew more about the- ur, mechanics... of the subject in question. Then I wouldn’t feel so unprepared.” She stammers.

Woe betide the feeling of inadequacy and unpreparedness she felt. It makes her feel less. Not enough for this vast gorgeous big man and his vast clutches of love he had to give.

Kylo approaches this so suavely she’s amazed. He’s wise about all of this. A thousand years of practice up his sleeve. She could envy him if she didn’t love him so bloody much.

“I trust you know the simple mechanics of what goes where.” He raises a wry brow.

She bites her lip. Cheeks hotter than the fire they’re sat next too. “I grew up on a farm. I know about the birds and the bees.”

“And vampires?” He crooks a wicked dark brow.

She gulps.

“Believe it or not, I lack experience in that general area overall.” She quips with a smile. He likes her smart tongue. She was no missish airhead.

She stands her wine down and slides her hands into his. Looks deep into the eyes of her other half; starting to swirl into pools of drowning honey gold and smoky russet brown.

“I don’t want to be ignorant about conjugal bliss. I just so want to please you-“ She says openly.

“And make love to me?” He seeks.

“And make love to you.” She repeats. Her whole body wracking into shivers from the shock of saying such brazen words. And the touch of his hand and the weight of his eyes on her.

He stands and steps back. Pulling her hands. Bringing her with him. Stepping them over to the bed. Hauling her up in his arms. Softness meets strength.

“Iris. My sweet. You please me by just _breathing_. Now, let me take you to bed and show you my full appreciation in all it’s numerous passions-“ He drawls.

Leaning in to seal a kiss on her scorching lips. It burns and prickles and cools, the hair on her neck stands tall with emotion.

His palms cup her bottom. Clutching her under her ass and lifting her into his arms. She squeaks into a bruising hot ice kiss and he walks them easily over to the bed.

He places her on it, she moulds into the softness and the pelts and blankets. And the thick downy snow quilts that she sinks into like it’s a blanket of untouched snow itself.

He crawls on top of her. Nibbles on her neck. Drifting down to her collarbones. Tasting the rosy flush on her skin, the salty spice of heather honey and soap on her.

He’s dying to know her nipples. What will they taste of? What shade will they be. He’s only seen them through the fog of linen gowns and that was never enough to give him a clue.

He’s not picky - the wondering is making him stiff and hard. A pale orange maybe, like sweet moist peaches? Reddish pink, tasting like tart berry wine? Or maybe they were dusky brown, like burnt chocolate and cinnamon.

He pulls back and sits up to catch her eyes. Holding her burning cheek under his palm and kissing her inbetween words. Heat is eclipsing everything. Lust lays thick on their tongues and sparking in their eyes.

He wants them indecently flushed and dripping sweat onto each other by the time they are through here tonight.

He’s ashamed to say he hasn’t - unloaded carnally in a few weeks. He will have to remember to keep tender for her.

“Let me undress you, wife.” He simpers at her. She nods. Intoxicated and dazed that when stopped kissing her. Stopped tasting the whiskey on his plush lips. Stopped feeling how his lips made sensation shoot to every throbbing limb of her hypnotised body.

She felt more drunk off kissing him than any of the pale gold wine she’s been sipping all night.

He draws back. Kneeling on the floorboards between her legs as she’s at the edge of the bed again. She shifts her hips and allows him to push up her skirts. He smiles. So patient and concentrated on his task.

Pushes the cloud of her petticoats and the linen chemise up to her thighs. She’s trembling already. Lungs rasped dry. Heart racing with nowhere to go.

He reveals the blue garters of her stockings. All the pretty highland flowers stitched onto her creamy legs. He smoothes his hands up past her knees. Gently undoes one garter, let’s it slither loose. Hooks his thumbs under the light wool and pulls it down.

She whimpers at the sensation. Fingers fist in the bedsheets. How could he make it so erotic? Removing clothing was sacred, and clandestine, of course. But he seemed to make her blaze with impatience and her nerves play a naughty game of thrashing tag in her veins.

Zipping and cracking like lighting. Or sparks coming off burning popping timber.

She almost crawls back up the bed. Flinching at the caress of his hands. His thumbs both stroking twin lines down the creamy inside of her thighs. Softer than butter. Skin as thin as tracing paper here. So delicate and untouched.

_And all his to take-_ and he’ll snatch her up as greedily as a spoilt brat of a child.

He leans down. Big back bowing as he kisses her kneecap. She jolts and tries not to jerk her leg into his nose. That wouldn’t be romantic. He kisses her smooth knee and over her kneecap.

Holding the arch of her heel and slipping the stocking evermore down her calf. Running his hand along the curve of the back of it as he kisses her shin. And like an endless rush of one of his soul-searing kisses. He wriggled the stocking off her foot. Discarded it to the floor where it belonged.

One stocking done and she feels like she’s on fire. He begins on the next-

Utilising the same slow kisses and manoeuvres. Big fingers brushing rasping along her legs. She’s sat on that bed but her heart and her head and body are spiralling away to heaven.

Her chest is heaving and by this point her nipples are puckered up to stiff little knots. They hurt where they brush against her chemise.

She keeps panting for breath but her lungs feel shrunken.

She feels him peel the stocking off her right foot. And her legs and thighs are naked for him. And then- _oh_ , she squeaks.

His head is nestled in her lap. He’s kissing her thighs, hands wrapped around both her kneecaps. His grip spans her legs. She’s shuddering so much her bones hurt. Doused in the acid-raw-vinegar of anticipation and such sharp feelings bursting in bliss over every nerve. She’s reeling undone and she wonders if he notices.

  
He notices _everything-_

The soft smack of his lips echoes somehow louder than her rioting heartbeat.

Kylo glances up and loves how this mere touch has put colour not just in her cheeks. But down her neck it now blooms. Flourishes on her bosom.

He wants to lick every inch of that hot, salted lavender skin. Smell the blood sloshing around beneath. Pulsing outwards, calling to him just like her arousal is. Through her bunched skirts he can smell it.

Honey musk and sweetness. Like nectar and brine. A hint of salt to make the sweetness all that more sugared.

He pulls his lips off her and stands. Pulls her up with him. Gently goads her up and presses them belly to belly. Cups her ass close so she can feel the hard ridge of his cock trapped to his thigh inside his infernally tight breeches. He’s throbbing for her and he wants her to feel it.

He plunges her into a kiss. Tastes her ripe lips that look as delicious as two slices of pink peaches. He devours every inch of her mouth. And isn’t shy about sliding his tongue in and stroking along her teeth.

He’s giddy - kissing and loving is something she’s only ever shared with him. And he loved it.

He breaks away by suck flowery kisses down her neck. His petal soft lips caress her skin as his hands tangle into her hair. Even past the pins his fingers pull and distort the fine curls. They hear some loosened pins drop to the floor. She frets-

“My pins- I should pick them- _oh_.” She gasps breathy when he takes her jugular vein in a teasing bite. It makes him hard and he’s ashamed to say he grinds his hard cock into her hip and growls a gush of breath through his teeth at the sweet blessed friction.

Silky softness and innocence against his strong hardness. His head is swimming with depraved debauched images.

Turning her over. Lifting her skirts over that plump ass and covering her like a stallion mounts and takes his mare. Bend her over that bed and smack that round little ass as he pumps into her like a rutting creature ramming their cock and fucking their seed into their mate.

His eyes definitely turning now. Now they are wheaten gold where a rich burnt brown once lurked.

She doesn’t go limp under him like a rag doll with no puppet master to guide her. She touches him too, tender and uncertain. But she holds the sides of his waistcoat or clutches his chest or his hair.

He’s making her arms and legs feels like useless outcrops. She can only pay attention to the pulsing beating heartbeat between her legs. There- where she’s sticky and desperate for something she thinks he knows how to give.

“I’ll buy you more.” He mumbles. Holding her head and sucking her neck and hearing her blood shiver and how she whimpers. Her spine wavers too. Humming with it.

“Turn around.” His words slant huskily against her mouth. Drawing back from a sloppy dominant kiss. She can taste the whiskey on his tongue. He can taste the wine on hers.

He’d sucked away every drop like her tongue was made of gummy sweet liquorice. Sugared fruit. All of her is too sweet.

She moves around on shaky knees. Putting her back to him. He steals himself a fortifying breath, in-out-in-out, reminding the beast inside him that this was not a place where it would be let loose from its confinement.

She steadies a hand on the foot of the bed. Nails scrape into the wood and she mourns that she isn’t touching him.

“I need to unlace you. And take those infernal pins out that lovely hair.” He growls. Hands moving to her waist where the fastenings began.

She has to close her eyes and breathe out a shudder when she feels his fingers fidget with her laces. The ones he’d done up earlier. It’s infuriating.

She wants passion and heat and more more _more-_ but he’s going so slowly it’s making her heart thud harder and louder. Feels like it hurts her chest.

He continues his even pace. Unwrapping his bride- his dove. Taking away the scarlet lace. She bites her bottom lip when he peels it away and guides it down her shoulders. She feels the air shift behind her. A wall of man behind her. Like she’s being guarded by a cold mountain.

He takes the sleeves and slips each arm out for her. Then slides the opened garment past her shoulders. Down past the petticoats tied at her waist. Ruffles and frothy white lace at the hem, like a dusting of sugar or a spray of sea foam at her ankles.

The heavy brocade silk softly thunks to pool around her feet. She steps out of it and doesn’t pay the wrinkled fabric any mind.

One thing he detested about a regency waistline, it came up to just under the bosom. Made her figure look very straight backed and long. When under that thin film of silk he suspected lurked the legs, waist and hips to rival a Norse goddess of fertility.

He’s seen glimpses. Little snatches here and there he’d caught when the wind presses her skirts back around her legs and _god-help-him-_ he’s more than once noticed the rounded peach of her mons through her skirts. The seductive curve of a hip that brings to mind Venus emerging from her shell.

He finds her waist with his hands now. Even through the linen of her chemise, she’s so warm. He grips her waist lightly. Pulling back one side of the tied bow of her petticoats that hung over the shape of her hips.

Cruelly hid them from his view. He’d have that scrap of linen held for contempt in the court if he could. How dare something keep him from admiring the shape of his wife’s comely hips-

He too guides that flounced and ruffled item to the floor. The graveyard heap of their propriety at their feet.

He moans low in the back of his throat. Obscenely glad - obscenely hard - to see how her chemise unbuttons from the front. His hands slide for her waist again. Flaring downwards, following the kinked slope of her waist to the wide hips he grips in his hands like the most perfect handles.

His eyes focus on her hair. He slowly pulls away pin-by-pin. Until the muddy silk of her hair billows free. Uncurls to hang between her shoulders. Curled and creased from her coiffure.

He shakes the braids gently to work the plaits loose. She sighs when his big gentle hands nestle into the twigs and mud, messy nest of her hair.

He turns her again. Twists her around and admires her from the front with her hair spilling back over her shoulders. Like a rich golden ale with tones of red and honey being poured.

She shyly looks up at him. One hand still gripping the bed. He tucks her hair back behind her ear. Somehow the gold of his eyes doesn’t frighten her-

It makes her wetter- he can smell the rush of new arousal dribbling down her warm pink inner thighs.

“So lovely.” He whispers. Any louder than a whisper seemed insane. He only wants more of this. More gasps and hushes and then he only wants moans and his name carrying on her pleasure hoarse voice.

He takes her hand and brings it up to place it on his neck. “I’m far too overdressed for such an occasion. Don’t you think so? My love?”

_Undress me._ His eyes dare at her.

She seized his challenge and rises to meet it. She undoes the cravat knot she so lovingly worked on earlier. Gets it loose and slithers the long strip of linen to his bare feet. Somehow so salacious to see his bare feet- she was about to undress and get into her bridal bed with this man and the sight of his feet somehow gets her gulping in the sheer crux of this whole consummating matter.

She starts next on the waistcoat buttons that are so gold they almost rival his eyes and the wedding ring gleaming on his hand where it’s relaxed down by his thigh. He’s watching her so intently she blushes.

She’s slack jawed and staring at his undressed neck. He chuckles.

She undoes the waistcoat and he helps her shrug it off. Lifting the shirt that remained and tossing it over his shoulders. Undoing to the cuffs and peeling it off his arms. He lets the white cotton cloud and mushroom on the air. Falling away to the floor as he chucks it there.

He’s impossibly _big_. Takes up the whole room and all the space in her eyes and her lungs. She doesn’t know how she’s just noticing it but this is inescapable- seeing him like this. In all his glory.

His great pale chest, she’s missed the sight of it. His marble skin, dotted with a constellation of black stars and very few fissures of long since healed scars. The great wedges of muscles and the long plains of his chest and boulders of his wide shoulders. The chest that’s all hers to curl up into, she realises.

He yanks her hand forwards and gets her touching him. Makes his breathing slip quicker. Her palm is confused with the cool of him. Even though there’s a blush pooling in the divot of his suprasternal notch. It gives away his lust just as his eyes do. He groans as she touched him.

He gets her palm in the centre of his chest. She feels odd to find there’s no heartbeat under her palm. She expected it but it’s still quite a thing to get used too.

“It’s dead. But it’s yours.” He assures her. Referring to his stony shard of a black heart.

“You can touch me just as much as I can touch you. I want your hands on me. Never be afraid to touch my love. As my wife, every inch of me is yours to explore.” He sighs. Looking hungry under the brim of his dark hair. Truly untamed.

She brings both hands up and steps closer. Nudging her toes into his on the bare floorboards. He watches every bit of her come closer. She eyes the three slashing scars at his right shoulder that she knew from experience, raked down over his shoulder.

She touches the first raised bump of the small scar with a gently inquisitive fingertip. His breath shifts.

“You’re lovely too.” She tells him softly. His eyes flicker like candles.

His hands grip either side of her chemise. The last layer- “May I?” He seeks. Her breath skips and she nods.

He patiently brings his big fingers up and undoes the infernal little row of buttons along the valley of her bosom. Pocked now with gooseflesh. Every hair on her body needled straight in erotic awareness.

She shivers as he undoes the chemise enough to let it just slide away down her ribs. Catches on her hips. But he tugs and it comes away cleanly.

And she’s naked in front of him. Stood there not knowing what to do with her hands and she feels mightily embarrassed. But her steely backbone makes her brave. She looks up into his eyes and they scorch her.

He steps forwards and gently brings one hand up to touch her breast. Drawing one finger over the soft shape of it. Right over her nipples - rosy red and he bets they do taste sweet like berry wine - and her nipple is twisted and shrunk and hard like a half cut ruby. She moans when his finger halo’s her nipple gently.

And as he was a man, a very carnal one, his gaze travelled lower.

Focuses on the ceases where her thighs meet her hips. Looks at the plump of them. Of the sweet triangle thatch of dark brown curls that guards the heavenly wet place between her legs.

“Sit on the edge of the bed, dove.” He says. He didn’t want her knees giving way with what he’ll do next.

She keeps her knees drawn close together until he sinks to a crouch and gently thumbs her kneecaps. Spreading out his fingers and driving them apart. She shivers with all these new brave sensations spreading across her.

“Trust me. Anything I do will bring you only pleasure. I promise.” He kisses her sternum. Nuzzles his nose into her. Spreads her legs and manages to insert his chest between them. One bulky arm cages her hip and slips around her smooth back, up under her hair.

“Your skin is so gorgeous. Iris. So soft. Like white velvet or a vat of smooth cream.” He smiles. Kisses over the moles pocked up her neck. He plucks smacking wet kisses onto her skin. Her pulse. Her collarbones. Shoulders.

She’s sighing his name and shivering on the bed like a cowed animal. She yelps loudly and her hand flies for the back of his hair to knot through the tresses, when he lowers his mouth to her nipples and his wet tongue laps around the stiff ruby peak. Nudging it and setting the space between her thighs on agony fire for more.

He cups her closer and lets her breast fall out his mouth after a hard sloppy suck. Nuzzles the other with his big nose and licks that one too. Feels the hard shape of her nipple stiffen on his tongue.

Buried his face between her breasts and kisses and licks and sucks red petal shapes there with his mouth. Stubborn bloodied poppies peeping through the snow.

He likes the trail his mouth leaves on her. She’ll show his marks so beautifully. He traces her exposed blue veins with his tongue. Every one he trails the tip of his wicked tongue along, where they shatter across her skin like blue tree roots or forks of lighting. Which wasn’t dissimilar to how he’s making her feel as of now.

Sucks on her collarbone again before he speaks. “I hope you don’t dislike this. Because now I’ve tasted them, I want those gorgeous sweet tits and nipples in my mouth all the time. Every minute of every day.” He groans. Sucking and licking her up some more. Addicted to her sugary lavender taste.

“I hope you’ll let me-“ He drools onto her breast. Smiling like a rogue.

Slipping his mouth to suck and hum on her nipple again. She thinks she gasps and nods. She’s not sure. She only knows the place between her legs is sopping now and she knows it’s his touch she’s craving.

“Lie back, Little dove.” He tells her. Licking his spit wet lips. Red where he’s been lapping at her nipples like a babe wanting to be suckled. She never imagined such a thing would feel so good. Especially that sharp edged sting of his tugging teeth.

She moves right back on the bed. Lying poker straight on her side. Hands by her thighs. Legs slightly open and waiting. She throws her head back on the pillow and nibbles her lower lip as she looks at the sunken painted ceiling. Before she shuts her eyes and listens to his breathing. His existing near her.

She knew this part would come- so lost in his touches she almost forgot.

“What on earth are you doing?” He seeks. The bed dips with his weight and he crawls to hover over her.

She opens her eyes and there he is in all his wide nature. Hair hanging down like black vines around his face. Gold eyes severe in the shadow. His skin painted red and gold off the stroking light of the hearth. His lips are still wet and shining in the light.

“It’s what I was..taught.” She explains. Seeing this makes his frown deepen. Stoic face all knotted up and perplexed. He tilts his head.

“Dove. If you were speaking in Urdu I couldn’t understand you less-“ He sarks. Inky lintels of his brow creased and crinkled.

“My mother told me-“ She starts.

_A bad start._ Already he knows he doesn’t like the sentence that will follow _._

“... that when I am a wife. I am expected to perform conjugal duties. No matter how ghastly I find the idea. No matter how much it hurts. I am to lie still and shut my eyes. Open my legs and let my husband-“ she clears her throat. “Put himself inside me and beget me with child.” She tells him. Mortified to heaven and back.

He chuckles. She looks up, startled.

“That’s what you were taught?” He repeats.

“To lay there as stiff as a board, eyes closed and thinking of rolling green fields and sunshine whilst your husband ruts himself into you above...” He describes.

Her voice is a squeak. “That’s about the size of it yes-“ She swallows. Nervously plucking at the covers below her hands.

“I suppose now you think me a terribly green fool?” She asks. Not able to look at him. Eyes burning with shame. He tilts her chin up and makes his words plain.

“Iris. My heart, my love. Look at me-“ He commands softly. She’s no thought of disobeying his orders. She raises her shining grey eyes to his handsome face.

He’s still looming over her. Watching her intently. His eyes could slice skin they’re so potent.

“I want to make love to you. My darling sweet wife. I want you to enjoy what I do to you and find great pleasure in it. I want to make you feel good- matter of fact, no! _Better_ than good. I want to make slow, wild, naked love to you til you’re screaming my name.” He insists cleverly.

“Oh-“ She gasps. More so when his hand lands on her waist and he leans down to coax her into one of his scorching kisses again. She’s doubly melting because now his big solid front is rasping against her. Cool and imposing.

Perspiration on their skin sliding slick together as he places himself between her legs and lets his fingers wander.

When he reaches her plump stomach- she nearly bites through his lower lip. The sting of her teeth makes his abdomen ache and his cock throb. He growls in pleasure at it. He always did like the rough with the smooth.

Stickiness of his pearly precome staining the insides of his breeches. So tight and constricting that it’s an infernal agony. He’ll bear it for now. He doesn’t wish to frighten her- and his generously sized manhood would frighten her.

His fingers dance wicked patterns down her belly as they kiss. Drinking of each other’s lips. Sharing air and heat and gasps. Iris never imagined just kissing could lead to such bliss.

They both moan when his fingers skim through the wispy hairs of her pubis. He strokes his big fingers through that gorgeous neat thatch of curls. Stroking down the mound her cunt with deft long, even movements. He hadn’t even touched her sweet wet lips yet.

She stiffens a little- barely perceptible but he’s so attuned to her, that he felt it. He eases slowly.

“I’m going to put my fingers between your legs now. Just for a moment-“ He tells her. Slipping his fingers downwards. Parting and slicking his fingers through that wet velvet of her cunt.

“Keep your eyes on me.” He hushes as she moans and gasps at the new sensation.

The place he’s stroking where no other man had ever touched. Sweet private places that he’s drooling to slobber all over with his tongue and suck her clean. Lap her up like a cat with a saucer of cream

She blushes at the obscene slicking noises of his fingers trailing through her wet pussy. Gently feeling over her vulva. Massaging her and drawing all the way down around her dripping lips. Down and around and up, and down again. Feeling her grow wetter. He leaves that sweet dainty hard pearl at the top of her, untouched for the moment. He wants to draw this out.

He shifts and raises _that hand_ to his face and puts his fingers in his mouth. Sucking her taste and getting his fingers all the wetter for her.

His mind nearly riots into madness at tasting the sweet salty brine of her pussy on his tongue. Some men called it a honeypot and now he knew why- nothing but heaven and nectar and sugar honey between her legs.

He wants to drink in this gorgeous cunt like wine. Like a true viking guzzling down ale or mead. He’d gorge on her gorgeous cunt and never come up for air. But he’ll have to build to that some other time- for now he’ll use his fingers and give her the orgasm her body is crying out for. Dribbling wet and weeping everywhere.

“Ohh. How do you?- _oh_.” She gasps. Head far back on her pillow and neck soaked with sweat.

“I’m very good at knowing what my darling wife needs. Where she needs my fingers.” He tells her smugly as he raises his thumb to softly brush at her clit. That hard little jewel growing tauter by the minute.

“Breathe my love. Remember to breathe.” He grins.

She jerks in his arms and grabs for the pillow behind her head. Eyes closed. Mouth wide. Feet planted on the end she pushes her hips up to him for more. He steadies her thigh and curls it over him.

She’s getting lost in that spiral of pleasure that’s yanking on her spine and buzzing a throbbing burn behind her stomach. Flitting outwards like rockets shooting up and down her legs and her arms. Her whole body is rife with it. With desire and bliss and so so _so very_ good- she can only mumble and gasp his name

He’s getting lost in her too.

He sits back on his heels, still between her legs. Arching over her as his free hand rips open his falls, tearing the cloth over the gold buttons.

He hears ripping, but he can’t pay any sort of mind to that. He shoves his breeches to his strong thighs and sighs in enormous relief when his fat throbbing cock wags free. Curling up to his stomach flushed an angry red and weeping for attention.

He strokes himself just once as he strokes between her legs. Slowly buried one finger in her tight rosy heat and- his brain is no longer there. There’s only her- her her her...

His Iris.

Her sweet scorching cunt swallowing his big finger whole. Sucking him into a silken wet vice. He twists and thrusts it in to her and his cock aches, bobbing and twitching with furious complaint that his hand shouldn’t be the thing pumping in and out of her right now.

He abandons his pleasure for hers. He feels it gathering closer- like some sweet pink feminine storm cresting over the horizon. He gets two fingers in her and she screams his name.

He slowly circles her hard little clit and lowers his mouth to her nipple once more. Moving his tongue and his fingers in tandem. Fucking and flicking and thrusting. Tugging her nipple swirling her clit and feeling her shudder.

“That’s it. That’s it-oh. Iris. Cum for me cum loudly for your husband. Soak my hand little dove.” He urges, mouth slanted to her breast. Slipping off with a wet pop to talk to her. Watching her earnest little face all pinched in pleasure.

He looks up and watches as she crumbles apart. Losing her mind with the pleasure. Her feet curl into the bed and her thighs tense and he smells as her lovely cunt shudders and sucks and twitches around his fingers as she sighs and cums for him.

He thrusts and swirls until she squirms. Teasing out every creamy drop of her. She didn’t soak his hand. But his fingers are sticky shiny-white with her release. He puts it to use and slicks that over his cock for the next part.

He slides up her body and makes himself home in the cradle her hips offered. She parts her legs for him and they both groan when his naked cock prods at her thigh. No barrier to stop them. They both huff and gasp into another breath stealing kiss.

“That- That was.” She can’t put order to her brain. She couldn’t even pluck out logical words.

Her whole body was supine. Like she was floating on a warm lake of hot milk, honey and rose petals. Softly swallowed her whole and her skeleton hums with bliss-

And she wants more-

He kisses her neck. Rubbing his hard cock into her thigh. The friction made him want to whimper. If that wasn’t completely ungainly and not to mention unmanly. And not at all dignified.

“You have the most beautiful and delicious cunt. Wife.” He leers at her.

Letting her taste the tiniest tang of her arousal on his tongue where he suckled his fingers. She shivers at his choice of language. He’s trailing his still sticky fingers through her pubis curls. As dark and wild as the hair on her head.

“I could spend a great many hours nuzzling and stroking these gorgeous curls.” She feels his fingernails rake into her where he parts the hair as he feels her.

“You have the most splendidly wicked fingers. Husband.” She says through a swallowed desperate ploy for breath. He chuckles around the kissing bite he takes of her neck.

He strokes down her cunt again. Checking how wet she is. How fluid this next transition will be. The crux of consummating their marriage.

“Do you want me inside you, dearest?” He seeks. Nuzzling her cheek.

She nods. Because more than anything she wants to make love to her husband. And if his, member, feels anywhere as godly as just two of his fingers- she’d like to study that rather pleasurable outcome.

She goes to look down but he cups her face and keeps her eyes centred in his. “I want to see your eyes when I push into you.” He explains.

His other hand grabs his cock and gives one last twisting stroke upwards. Feeling them and their wetness coating his skin. “Look at me...” He mumbles against her lips in a whisper so soft she hardly heard it.

She felt the hard thick meat of him pulsing wet at her entrance. He indulges in a moment of slicking his silken cock head through her folds. Catching on her clit and rubbing a most pleasing pattern up and down on her.

“Look as I make you mine, little dove.” He sighs, leaning forwards and spearing himself into her.

It pinched an awful lot and she can’t deny the sensation is strange. He’s stretching and splitting her unused cunt wide open and piercing deep into the pink pulsing heart of her.

He pressed his forehead to hers and gasps. She feels his big thighs tremble and words seems to be lost on him no too. His voice is strained. Like he’s wounded. “Oh-gods oh. Breathe, Iris. Breathe for me.”

He’s said it because she didn’t realise she was holding her breath. Stopping her lungs up. But she lets a slow exhale drag out her chest. She sighs and watches his face.

He sinks in inch by inch a little deeper. It feels like he’s a big man - he goes on forever. Just when she thinks he’s done there’s another bit to plunge into her. He spreads her legs wide and cups her thighs in his hands. He’s trembling and sweating by the time he bottoms out to the hilt. Collapsing for breath against her shoulder.

“Heaven. You feel like goddamn heaven Iris. Oh- _fuck_.” He curses. That curse word dripping raw from his split lips makes a little delighted flicker spark along her spine. She’s drawing out passion from her big man.

He moves his hips back and she feels the hot scrape of him brand her from the inside out. And when he plunged in again she loses her breath - in an entirely different way.

It’s like he speared a flaming sword of bliss straight into her heart. It echoes and rattles around her veins. She yelps loudly and grabs for his hair. Calling out for him.

“Kylo.” She sighs. Beautiful tits heaving on the swell and dip of her chest.

He starts the gentle rhythm of guiding his giant hips to slap and retreat as he fucks her. It’s been so long since he’s been twined with a female set of limbs- and now it’s her and he’s drunk off love.

He plunges and ruts and finds a good pattern. Sweat dripping off his back. Fire light bounced off the globes of his ass only just torn out his trousers. Tightening and flexing as he thrusts and pumps into her gorgeous heat. He covers her from the firelight and warmth he’s so big.

She’s squeezing the very breath out of him. The force of his passion stole her breath. She looks up into his concentrating face and cups the sides of his sweaty dark head.

He leans in to snatch a wet kiss of her. A wild kiss. All tongues and clacking teeth. And softness interspersed with moans and creaks of the wooden bed.

The filthy liquid snap of their hips meeting. Iris can feel how wet she is. How his big manhood is swilling it all around inside her. He can feel her spurting out and down over his balls. Sticky wet slurps between their thighs.

“You’re so. Oh my dove. Sweet Christ.” He curses and it bleeds into a teeth clenching growl as she wrapped that gorgeous cunt around him tighter. And her legs. Her arms are around his neck and he’s licking beads of sweat off her throat.

“Is that good?” She asks in dumb pleasure. His thrusts hit deeper. His thumb presses harder and she mewls so loud - uncaring if the whole Inn below them can hear the headboard slapping the wall.

The creaky bed scraping the floorboards where he moves to fuck her, and fuck her good.

“So good. Divine.” He growls into her ear. Sucking her lobe into his mouth. His hot breath puffs her hair and her nipples rasping hard against his chest like the granite tips of arrowheads.

“Such a beautiful cunt- my god, like it was made for me-“ He huffs.

He pulls back, thrusting still to watch her tits sway with his movements. Flushed red from between her nipples, right up to her cheeks. Her eyes burn bright like the pale grey moon. Hair sticking in tamped dark curls to her neck.

He places one big hand her hip. The other holding himself up as he ruts her. His cockhead hit upon a place inside her that she could feel _everywhere_.

Babble is falling out her mouth. Gasps and moans and more and yeses. He’s giddy with it.

“What a sight. Splitting you open on my cock and you’re still crying out for more?” He grins down at her. Smug as all hell.

He winds one plump thigh over his hip and starts fucking hard and deep. Not pulling out. But rather seating himself all that much deeper and not pulling away even when it rags on a spot that makes her want to scream and burst- it’s too much

She feels like something inside her will shatter. She tries to escape from it but he grabs her thigh and doesn’t let her run. He’s close and he’ll cum in her hot cunt like this. Spill deep and claim her womb. He’s determined-

“That’s it. That’s it my love. Give in. Let me hear you cum again.” He asks.

Kissing her neck. Clenching his teeth to resist tearing open her throat as his peak is right around the corner. He pulls back and sucks her nipple for a moment. Licking and lapping up her sweat as his moan travels across the goose pimpled flesh of her jiggling breast. Swaying with his thrusts.

He starts to moan too. Warning her of his impending climax. He wants to shudder into it together with her. He rolls and pinches her sensitive clit under his big rough Viking fingers and she simply shatters into tiny dainty pieces.

He bites into pillow behind her neck and his fangs puncture the pale cotton - better that than ripping open her jugular -and she sighs and groans his name loudly. Cumming for him. And calls for Christ’s name along with his.

He never suspected to be so closely mingled with anything related to the son of god. But his vision blurs as he spurts into her deep. Filling up her spasming cunt. Riding out the little last shocks of pleasure.

Listening with a grin to how perfectly obscene they sound together- her sloppy orgasm swirling against the plunge and tug of his still hard cock.

Her moans die out. As do his. They blend into gasped breaths.

The headboard slamming the wall and rasping the floor ceases. He slumps down into her chest. Though catches himself on his elbows so he doesn’t crush her completely.

They find each other again through dazed eyes and she strokes rogue pieces of sweaty hair off his head. Away from those eyes which had turned dark once more. Melting deep pools of burnt-molasses. He stays inside her for a few more moments.

His skin is flushed from his belly, right to the fetching trail of wispy hair, leading to the wiry curls where the root of his thick long cock nestled into his body. His breeches were still trapping his knees. He’d only shoved them down to fuck her. Between his nipples he’s flush red too. She places her hand there and feels the warmth of his skin where they’d rutted together. Some coarse chest hairs brush her palm too.

A piece of her feels missing when he pulls out. A warm trickle follows him. He’s worry to see a little blood mingled with the sticky white of his seed.

It smells tempting and divine but his tempers have been sated for now. Always with a man of his proportions, that’s to be expected. That blood. The blood that spoke of how he now owned her virginity. He loved it from her and made her thankful for it when she came messily all over his fingers.

He leans down and kisses her cunt. Nuzzles the tip of his nose into the curls on her mons. Feels the silky hair brush his nose and he loves how she smells sweet here too.

He kisses that thatch and then crawls up her body to kiss her mouth. Before he slips to the side and gets behind her. Turning her on her side and finally shoving his trousers off his legs.

She’s prickled with cold and he tucks the quilts and blankets and pelts around them both. Covers her back with his chest and kisses the hairline at the back of her neck. His arms bunch bulky and thick around her. And she’s never felt more safe. More loved. Her thighs burn and her lower stomach feels slightly pinched.

When she turns her head back to him he captures her sleepy lips in a grin. Catching on the wicked gleaming gold of his wedding ring in the dim firelight. Their room is nearly dark now. And she never wants to sleep in a bed without him, ever again. Her loving vampire of a husband-

Who naughtily snuck a hand down to cup her breast again and toy with her nipples he seemed thoroughly besotted with.

She sighs for him. “My new favourite sound. You crying out for me in rapturous pleasure.” He hums against a kiss to her shoulder. Hums another. A regiment of kisses marches down her arm.

Clever clever society for wanting to shield young girls from this. From sex. Making love. She far more understands fallen women. If she’d had a taste of that bliss- she’d never want to be free of it either. So tempting. So divine.

“So that’s what happens in a marriage bed...” She comments wryly. Eyes swelling shut.

“That-“ Kylo’s grinning. Nuzzling her neck. “And so _so_ very much more dove. More I will happily teach you. But for now. Just rest. I’m here.” He smirks against her skin.

Presses his chest to her back and she finds his hand and twined her fingers through, stroke his wedding ring, before she’s lost to dreams.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also a little birdie told me this pairs really well with Cherry Wine by Hozier... and boy, were they right. I can also honestly say it gives off some vibes that remind me of a song called Carry Me by Eurielle - go forth unto Spotify my friends and tell me what you think....
> 
> Matter of fact if anyone has anything that reminds them of this story, I would adore to hear it ❤️❣️🐺🕊


	19. Bliss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is really long for some unbeknownst reason to me. (Edit? What edit? Who’s she?) I suggest a beverage and a comfy place to curl up with this chap. I flatter myself exceedingly to say it’s got a bit of everything; humour, raunch, naughty horses. The works. Please do enjoy and tell me what you think if you like... ❣️

Dreams encompass her again. So vividly and so tactile she hardly feels like she’s dreaming at all. It always feels so real.

She’s in a silvery wood. Not some deeply dark forest with haunting navy burning between the heavy trees, and cloying mud. No stout trunks blotting out the sun or looming menacing over her. Cutting out the sky and leaving only dim mossy-green blackness below. Trees so close that they begin to crowd in, like walls.

This wood of her imaginings was entirely different.

It was silver. Light and air and free free sky. An open vista of birch trees dusted with sparkling clinging snow, and their bases crawling with frost. Amber-fire little blossoms snapping open on the pallid branches.

Snow stretched as far as the eye could see, off into the mushy fog of the horizon. The sun blazes over this icy landscape and catches on the shimmering frost like a thousand winking diamonds.

She can feel the warmth on her skin as she trudges through the snow in her meagre cloak. Admiring the homey gentle calls of pigeons cooing in the air. The distant rumble of a herd of bay brown deer dissolves into the distance. There is little wind brushing cool along her skin. Making every hair on her body stand tall. Makes her huddle deeper into the warm thick fur-lined cloak drawn about her.

She looks up and appreciates how there are no leaves on the trees to shiver in that meagre breeze. Only blossoms.

She only notices the soft gentle powder blue of the searing sky. Feels a cold wisp of breath ghost out her lips. Her hair curl at her cheek. Where she soldiers on through the snow, her boots sink and mush into the earth and her gloved palm passed a graze across the cold frosted bark.

She’s smiling. She feels happy. Some little pocket of yearning stitched onto her heart told her this was home to her. This was where she belonged. Finally she’s found her peace.

She felt that soothing attachment come from deep within. It came from the very marrow of her bones. Contentment pulses around her body. She’s strong and happy. With marigold sunshine pouring on her cheeks, and powder snow crushed under her footfalls, there’s this glorious sunny wood, and there’s- there’s something else.

Someone else.

She can sense it. The way her body and mind tell her she isn’t alone. That sense of company. She’s smiling at someone ahead of her in the trees. Lifting her skirts and fur lined cloak up out of the way of her long strides cutting through the snow.

She beams, gazes ahead and her mystery companion moves, Sylph-like through the trees. He moves slender. Like the drawing approach of a calm summer, or a sweetly awaited spring.

He moves like freshly laundered silk strung out to dry, dancing on hot jasmine air. Moves as fluid as water.

She catches a snatch of him. Of a sapphire blue coat, woven out of the bluest midnight, lapping at booted black ankles. The tall flood of him is like the sea cutting, winding through the gaps of the trees like growing vines.

She can smell cologne, fragrance, the air of him where he moves is rife with it. Swaying on the wind that carved gently around the pair of them. Maybe that’s how she knows he’s there- faint echos burn bright with it.

A glimmer of pristine petals that stir and enchant. Jasmine blossom, salty wood sage and bright crooning elderberry.

All this cold surrounding them, and he smells like an eruption of summer.

His cologne brings to mind a hot midsummer inky-dark night, somewhere warm, sun baked, dry exotic air full of flowers. Gusting across on a white marble veranda, twined with jasmine vines filled with white blooms.

Red sour berries and bursting purple grape wine on her tongue, watching a black sky full of bursting netted stars. Able to smell the brine and salt of a tepid sea on that very same dancing air. Feel silk on her skin. Warm and sated. Like she’s in the embrace of a lover.

A marble palace that smells of jasmine, edged by the warm sea. As she sips on sour red wine. A memory or a dream so vivid she could taste every second of it.

This man, this being, he is doubtlessly a traveller from ancient and exotic lands. Transplanted from a time long since lost.

His clothing, his wisdom, opulent scent. All pours off him like pollen beating off plants in the springtime. He’s pulsing with life, with power and serenity. It can barely contain him.

She wants to look at him more. She’s curious. Her eyes seek for his shape- magnetised. _Enchanted_.

But she only picks her skirts up and carries on her slow place. Feeling the wind rip rosy-red cold at her cheeks. Ploughing through the snow. Knowing her unseen companion waits up ahead.

He halts nearby in the trees. Always this man is kept secreted from her full view.

He turns to her. She can tell. But all she can see is the low sun burning blazing at her eyes over his shoulder.

He’s tall. Very tall- almost as lean and towering than the powerful pale birch trees clustered around them. He blends into them well. She sees a lock of icy blonde hair fold over his shoulder. Poker straight. Blazing like misty flaxen in the sun. Spun gold.

His voice calls out to her. Drifting across the snow like birdsong. Like the plucked strings of a lyre twinkling notes in her ears. An enchanting and silvery melody. Not as bassy as the splintered smoke granite of Kylo’s voice. But similarly dark and charming in its own way.

A voice that could charm the sparkling stars out of their cosy spots in the navy heavens above if he wanted.

“ _These are your favourite are they not?_ ”

She looks over in his direction. She spies one pale marble hand reaching down - slender long fingers and the sleeves of his handsome velvet coat, draping robes that looked nearly medieval - fingers touching lightly to a delicate tendril of a bluebell, shooting up through the spiking frost. The blooms clutching on desperately to a wisp of grass at the bottom of a tree.

“ _Bluebells, yes they are.”_ She smiles. They were her favourites. Reminded her of the sad manor she’d once called her home, back in England.

She watched for them to come up through the cold soil of Westwell’s gardens every spring. She loves the dainty friendly blue flowers of forget-me-nots. The dazzling sky blue of perfumed hyacinths and the bright cloud of blue hydrangeas, in the wild.

He chuckles. The sound sends a shiver of delight through her veins. Sparkling sunshine and bubbling yellow champagne flows through her. There was no malice in his voice. Only love.

That cloak of midnight clutches one pale hand to the tree, and passes around it. A silver serpent ring on his middle finger. The metal snares silver at her eyes. Blue sea coat hidden by the trunk. He comes around the tree he’s holding and into a clearing ahead of her. Still she doesn’t look. She wants to command her eyes to follow him-

“ _Watch_...” He commands gently. She looks down at her feet. Around her skirts and booted toes, and little kernels of colour start to pop up and wriggle through the snow. Curling upwards to the sun.

She smiles in amazement as stark little dots of blue crack through the pristine snow. Flowers begin to bloom all around her feet. Little forget-me-nots, indigo flowers, foxgloves, and of course, dainty arches of bluebells. They all blossom into being around her feet.

She smiles and laughs in disbelief. Crouching to touch the new blooms around her. “ _That’s incredible.”_ She marvels.

“ _All for you. Little spark._ ” He comments.

The flowers nudge at her shoes, she opens her palm and a sprouting foxglove brushes it. Curls into her hands reach. She can smell the sugar-nectar of its petals. _  
_

_“I have always found pleasure in bright blooms. It astounds me how such beautiful things can survive such bitter hardship.”_

“ _Frail flowers surviving in snow and frost. There is a beautiful irony to it.”_ She comments. She feels this strangers gaze on her.

_“I admire the perseverance of such lovely things._ ” She can hear his smile. “ _Adversity makes them blossom all the sweeter.”_

Where she’s still crouched, booted feet appear before her in her eye-line. Boots dusted with clinging wet snow. Midnight ink robes trailing along the ground after him. Snowflakes rasping on the fine grain of the velvet. The flower petals surrounding them both catch on the sun. They brightly beam like nature’s own sapphires.

“ _Must be such tough, courageous little things._ ” Comes that silvery voice. _  
_

She looks up expecting to find his savagely beautiful smile, but she only sees the blazing sun cutting over her shoulder. She blinks and tries to shades her eyes with her hand. Only catching the shadow outline of him. Her eyes catch only upon the lean figure and the silk of long hair.

And she’s warm. Too warm. Burning. Her mystery companion is swallowed into a dragging blur. The horizon suddenly blends into white. Mushing and crashing on her like stormy waves. She falls into snow. Only it feels remarkably crisp and cool like cotton-

She wakes. Thrown rudely back into her actuality.

The snow is in fact the icy press of her face being snuggled into the ivory, warm goose-down pillow under her cheek. She is indeed warm from the sun. And the overly huge wall of a muscled husband at her back. His arm slung over her hips.

The sun is tickling at her eyelids. She opens them and a sunny orange dawn is blazing through the curtains they’d forgotten to shut last night in their desperation for wedded amour-

_Oh_. How she blushes.

Her toes curl as she recalls their rather blissful evening abed. The sensual undressing. The kissing and the intimate touching. Her legs wrapped around his hips as he moved so wickedly deep inside her. Splitting her open crudely with his cock and drowning her in passion and pleasure.

As she uncurls her lazy toffee-supine limbs, the flickering of pain stabbing up her thighs and in her groin reminds her of that blessedly divine coupling. The gold and jewelled bands on her fingers becomes a solid very-real weight again.

She can’t help but grin. Sleepy and warm. Hair mussed and most likely knotted to high heaven from the comb of his thick fingers - such big masculine fingers. Her body feels bruised with his kisses and she trembles remarking how his godly lips had felt upon her.

She smirks at that irony. This handsome vampire-devil at her back, he had kissed her neck and it felt like _heaven-_

She takes a moment to watch the shimmering sun glint over the glens and mountains. Listens to unfamiliar birdsong and strong Scottish wind rap at the window panes. The promise of a new day burns bright across the sky in slanting orange bursting into washy cerulean.

She turns back and pressed her hips into the bed. Twisting on her side and facing back into the bed. Back into her crudely large husband. His naked arm still slung over her hips. Sliding down to drape over her thigh as she moves. She admires the way the rising sun kisses ochre-bronze across his pale stocky muscles.

She looks at his deeply handsome face in his rest. Hair falling wild over his pillow like a dark storm. His complexion so peaceful and contented in rest.

She watches where his black lashes spill onto his white cheeks. Cream bordered by shadow. A starkly rich contrast. Half his face is turned into his pillow. His lips and his cheek kissing into the cotton.

He must’ve sensed her shift. Because she’s still shamelessly examining him when his eyes crack open. Hooded and slow. Meeting her own where they lay adjacent on their pillows near each other.

So close they were sharing the same air. The same warm damp patch of mattress where they’d made love hours earlier.

His eyes blaze like lemon-honey flame. The chestnut of them transformed on the slanting rays of the morning sun. Shafting through the window and laying sluggish in the room, twirling with dust mites. The peaceful dance of them on the air moves all around them as they lay there gazing at each other.

He brings a big cool hand up from under the covers and cups the back of her head. “I enjoy knowing I’ll never wake alone again.” She rasps to him. Voice all tender husky and unused from slumber.

He swallows and smiles. Shuffling over to lay a sweet soft kiss on each of her cheeks. “You’ll never have to sleep in a lonely bed again either.” He promises.

A sultry tone creeping into his bassy unused voice. His hand slithers from her knotted nest of hair to her back. He pulls her close so their bodies mash together. Her breasts on his chest making his cock stir to life.

“And you’ll never fall asleep without my hands having first roamed all over your gorgeous naked body.” He pledges. “Among other parts...”

“Lord Ren.” She blushes. Toes curling. Scandalised. He doesn’t look sorry. In fact he looks rather proud of himself.

She muffled half her smile and her pink cheeks in her pillow. He leans across and kisses that warm cheek. Tastes the heat of blood underneath her skin. Dewy from sleep.

He thinks he might love her to death- especially like this.

All warm and snuggled up under sheets from sleep. Rosy pink and unawake yet. All naked and snug for him.

He leans over and kisses her more. He wants more of that blush rushing under his tongue. He gets it. Kissing up her collarbones, her throat. Sweeps her hair out the way and she stretched her neck back on the pillow as he sweeps it aside. He can nearly taste the sound her silky tresses make rasping back against her skin. Bearing her beating pulsing throat to him.

He takes a deep inhale of her, of blush and blood. He groans into her skin. Wanting to make a feast out of kissing her. Make it his life long occupation. Mouthing at her, tenderly leaving red rose petals in his wake on her snowy skin. Scattering them all over and gathering up each lovely breathy sigh she gives him.

He shifts over her. The covers sculpting to his naked back as he arched over her. Pressed hip to hip with his wife. Her thighs fall open for him.

He reminds himself of the mind stealing bliss that was them joining together. Especially when his hardness rubs against the petal heat of her soft cunt. Morning erection smearing pearly precome over her thigh.

She groans for him. Runs her hands up his muscled biceps as he leans down and cages her into the bed and nuzzles and drowns her in kisses. The warmth of his tongue is such a delightful contrast to his cold skin. The difference soothes and burns. It’s delicious.

She finds out how comfortable this man is in his own naked state. She runs her hand down the strong arch of his back and finds the sheets have slid down to his thighs. Baring his back and his rounded soft ass completely to the cool of the room around them. When he’s on top of her, his entire form covers her better than the clutch of these bedsheets.

He’s sucking on her pulse and one thumb is swiping over a nipple knotted up into a resentful peak from the cold. She throws her head back and sighs upwards, finding his eyes where the deep honey pits are admiring her. He can’t take her again this soon. He knows she’ll be sore after last night.

“Are we to be confined to this bed today?” She asks cheekily. “I might have to pull rank and object to such a plan.” She laughs as his teeth nibble under her jaw.

“Cheek me again, Lady Ren, and I’ll fetch four cravats and tie you down to this bed.” He smirks in threat. Between her thighs she pulses sweetly at the merest thought.

The state of her- they’d only made love for the first time last night and here she is getting flustered at the thought of being restrained. He must be making a sinful wanton woman out of her.

She doesn’t exactly object to that rather savoury thought either-

He pulls back where he’s looming over her. Kisses her lips sweetly and hums into the divine kiss. Her spine is all weakened and zipping with bliss. So much so it’s making her rather glad to be lying down.

But with her legs either side of his body, he can’t recall anything else in all his years ever feeling more pleasant than this.

“How about a ride across the heather strewn glen, and a picnic if the weather holds...” He asks. Black hair swinging down in her face. Golden eyes strangling all the sense out of her heart and lungs.

She smiles. It sounds like a most pleasing outing. She’s spent so long in her life, being banished from doing the things she longs for, she’s getting used to being the mistress of her own life and decisions. It’s quite a dizzying liberation in its own right.

“I know Erland and Kana would appreciate a ride out.” He adds. Kissing her shoulder. Knowing how much his damn horse will appreciate her being there. Infantile creature.

“You’re having breakfast and a bath before we set out and you cannot argue with me about that.” He kisses the tip of her nose.

“Why ever not?” She asks. Not seeking to argue. But seeking as to his reasoning behind such care.

“Because you need nourishment after last nights exertions and I will always strive to see that you are kept happy, healthy, warm and well-fed.” He smiles softly against her opposite shoulder. Kissing his way there, from her throat and across.

“And because you need spoiling. You’ve had a criminally sparse existence devoid of spoiling thus far in your life and I will rectify that come hell or high water.” He smirks. Kissing her arm.

“A true gentleman.” She declares.

“I was a Viking and a Medieval Knight. My love. Not some pampered dandy of the ton with champagne polished boots. I know how to keep my Lady amply satisfied.” He smugs.

“Born from an age of chivalry.” She smiles. “How thankful I am for that.” She admires that different quality to him. It had shone clear from their first meeting.

He kisses her lips once more and then launches himself out of the bed. She squeaks as he pulls away - dipping his head between her legs before she goes and kissing her mound, nuzzling her pubic curls with his nose, sneaking a naughty kiss lower down near her sex, before he exits the bed and finds himself his discarded shirt.

She blushes mightily watching his fully naked form as he turns sidewards to pull on his shirt. Such crude muscles. So large was he built it’s most intimidating. She lets her eyes carve along the pallid strong marble of his skin. The bow of his body is enchanting.

From the ivory arc of his back and shoulders, downwards and ever downwards, her eyes skim over the hilly curve of his supple, well-formed, very muscular arse, shoulders to the forward jut of his thick hips and the strong columns of his thighs. She looks away before her eyes snatched a glimpse of what lay dormant between them.

She did see- she saw the flaccid state of him. Hanging thick and heavy there between his legs. The jet black curls where his cock joined to the triangular Adonis belt of his abdomen and hips. Ridges and slabs and plains of muscle made him up. She felt like a collection of jumbled plushy round globes in comparison. Tummy and breasts and her highly jiggly ass and thighs.

One thing she’d been uninformed of before last night, was the fact that she wasn’t expecting his member, his cock, to feel so good and so right stretching wide inside her. The plunge of that thick headed-glans at the top of him breeched her and it stung like fire and then it felt absolutely divine. A different manner of flame kissed brutally at every inch of her.

If she was cast down into brimstone and hellfire for loving a man like him. She’ll go willingly for every second she could take gladly in his embrace.

She felt the pleasure of him bursting across her back. Her thighs. All up her spine and into the very corner of every tip of her toes and fingers. She didn’t know if that was attributed to the vampiric charms, or her all consuming love and lust for him. She thinks both was the heady combination, and his divine manhood thrusting against wet blissful spots inside her that she didn’t even know existed, that was her undoing.

In the bittersweet autumn blaze of morning light, she watches him pull on his shirt and the linen hem of it comes cresting down to his thighs. Not before affording her a delectable peak at his backside. Even the sight of the pale globes of his buttocks make her blush a burning bright red.

He can smell the plume of her blush from over where he’s stood. It makes his chest puff out a little in pride that she admired him in such a way.

For too many years people only look to him to see his sell-sword savagery. They saw him and they saw the ruthless bloodthirsty warrior. The arms and powerful shoulders that could cleave heads from shoulders when armed with a Ulfberht sword. The hands that could rip limbs from bodies without mustering a drop of sweat. He’s built like a warrior from another age.

He’s glad she looks at him and blushes. It makes him feel an odd sense of manly-husbandly pride. How his wife wants to admire him. How he’ll always let her.

He tugs his breeches up his legs and smirks to himself with the amount of missing brass buttons there were. He manages to just about fasten them around his hips. Goes for the jug and basin in the tiny anteroom and splashed some cold water on his face. Pats himself dry and then rings down for breakfast and water for a bath, whilst Iris dresses herself in a nightgown and robe to fast with him.

Kylo traps her into a melting kiss after he’s put in word with the timid maid about ordering his Lady a full Scottish breakfast. Cups her face where she’s sat in their rumpled bed. Groans for her and his cock twitches with hungry agreement.

She used the anteroom. Wrapped herself in a night dress and gown, and gingerly opens the dining room door. Peeking inside past the creaking door and she’s surprised to find a breakfast is already awaiting on her.

The fire is blazing and a handsome husband sits at the table in his own red dressing gown, waiting on her as he pours over a local news-sheet of some sort.

Breakfast is already on the table. The teapot steaming away. The terrine dishes all warmed and awaiting her attention. Delicious Scottish food within. Sunshine slants from the window onto the table. Catches onto the chestnut-warm of Kylo’s eyes as she walked in. In a rumpled gown and with messily combed hair.

She goes to demurely hide her shambled state in her seat. No such luck. Kylo catches her and drags her onto his lap when he sees she’s shying away in all her shabby appearance. Attempting to walk right past and he can’t have that.

His lips find her neck and start a military offensive of passionate kisses and lovely nibbles. His hands clamp her waist. “You look divine my love.” Matter of fact she looks as divine this morning as she did yesterday in being his loving bride.

“I’m tumbled and mussed and really not very properly dressed.” She points out. Her hands splayed to his solid front.

He grins a wicked chuckling grin. “I rather desire you all tumbled and improperly dressed. Looks like you’ve had a thoroughly loving tumble around in the bedsheets with your husband.” He smacks little butterfly kisses up along her jaw.  
  
  


He does love something about her being all messy and dressed down in a robe it only took a flick of the hand to undo.

“You have never been a more lovely sight to me, than you are right now.” He sighs into a kiss to her cheek.

Pulling back and smiling at her with his whole face. His whole expression beams with it. His eyes sparkle warm in the Scottish sun.

He certainly knows how to make her blush. She feels her warmth shoot right down to her toes. Also because of the compact muscles she feels below her thighs and bottom. The sturdy trunks of his thighs. The enormity of that beautiful dormant organ betwixt them. Her softness moulds to his hardness.

She kisses his lips before he lets her go to her place to have her breakfast. As she opens the dishes and examines the offerings of the Inn’s marvellous cook, he pours her some tea. Assam. A strong blend.

“I can’t believe I am only now asking you this question seeings as we’re now married. It seems unpardonably un-English. But how do you take your tea, my love?” He smirks gently.

She smiles so wide at him her cheeks hurt. Moments like this her heart beats so loud and proud for him - he hears it thump.

They listen to the amber steaming tea pour freely from the silver spout into the tiny cradle of the bone china cup. She almost laughs at the sheer idiocy of this great hulking viking nimbly pouring her tea into a dainty China tea service.

She smiles. “With the nicest sentiment intended, you’re not spawned from English soil, dearest, so the offence is excusable. Milk, no sugar.” She explains as the lifts a lid of a small brown pot containing a thick creamy swirl of porridge - _parritch_ in a Scots tongue.

To go with it is a jug of thick cream, brown sugar and a heap of raspberries and a jar of heather honey with a wooden honey dipper. There’s a plate of coddled eggs and a whole smoked kipper and some salmon, Fresh from the loch according to the maid, Kylo informs her.

There’s another plate piled with skillet baked bannocks and a rack of golden brown toast and tattie scones. There’s dishes of apricot marmalade and bright cherry jam. She’s spoilt for choice.

She makes a start with the porridge. Kylo assures her that he didn’t think the black pudding would be to her taste. It’s not entirely to his either, pork blood, suet and barley groats weren’t to his liking. Animal blood congealed in such a way never did much for his appetites.

He preferred hot, fresh, warm ichor that he could feel the trail of fire copper it left down his hungry dry throat.

He watches his new bride, basking in the sunshine, enjoying her breakfast. Blowing lightly on the spoonful of porridge, cream and brown sugar. 

He smiles and she asks him about the ride they’ll take out. If he planned anywhere special. He says he’ll ask the delightful Mrs. M some good routes that would offer them the best Kinlochleven had to view. The glens, the rocks and the open hills under an open sky. The heather tumbling in the wind. So thick across the mountainside you could almost walk across the top of it.

When breakfast is dispensed with, the newlyweds take to their bedchamber to dress each other once again. She takes her bath as instructed. And afterwards they dress together. Slow practiced strokes and numerous kisses dotted in-between pulling on civility and stays and chemises and shirts.

Kylo’s is his usual all dark fare from his head to his toes. With a white shirt and cravat and a deep blue waistcoat. She likes him in blue. She does up the buttons on the fine deep sapphire wool and tells him so. He thanks her with a sinful line of kisses down her throat.

She opts for one of the new gowns he’d bought her for her wedding trousseau. A deep shade of green. Ferns and seaweed and soggy moss from the very heart of a deep forest. A green so deep it’s almost black.

It’s an excellent shade for her hair. Kylo admires her pulling it on after he helps with her lacing her stays over her chemise and tying the ruffled laced petticoats to her hips.

The wool fits snugly and she can still feel the press of his passionate kisses on her thighs where he helped - all too eagerly volunteered - to help tie her garters again. Made her go all gooey inside and subscribe to silliness of the swooning-female-variety.

She strokes the snug wool sleeves that rest at her wrists. It’s doubtless a dress designed for colder climates. And she applauds his clever forethought. She’ll need dresses of a warmer cloth when they get home, to Bavaria. To Ranlor Castle.

He holds her hips when he’s done lacing the dress. Loves the dark forest-sage shade of it next to her skin and hair. Pale sky, green trees and muddy tree bark. An irresistible palette of nature and earth.

As a man who is sprung from and inclined to the basest salt of the earth, and feels at home in nature and woodlands, he loves this rich hue of green on her; it makes him think of the pine trees way back home. Makes him think of pressing her back to one and winding her legs around his hips. Pushing deep onto her. Aching to see the creamy skin of her thighs in juxtaposition next to the murky bark.

Or pushing her hands to that same tough bark and whipping her petticoats and skirts to her ears. Exposing that pale little ass and grabbing it as he fucks himself so deep into her. Cumming so hard in her heavenly cunt that even his knees weaken.

His cold hands on her swaying jolting breasts. Tweaking her hard cherry stone pink nipples, hard from arousal and the cold. He’d watch the snow between their joined bodies as he pulls away and lets her feel the creamy white of him flow down her inner thighs.

He’d turn her around and back her into that tree and plunge into her with his gloved fingers. Snow swirling in his hair as he swirls his fingers inside her velvet cunt. Teasing out another orgasm. Piling pleasure on top of pleasure til she’s shaking.

He’d swallow her kisses and screams as they turn to ash in his mouth. His fingers finding that sweet little spot inside that breaks her open. He’d love her against the tree and drink in the moans from her so not even the wolves ears could pick up on their cries.

All that from a dark green dress-

He nestled a kiss into her hair coiffure. Tugged into a messy plait, tied with a navy velvet ribbon, and coiled up at pinned back at the nape of her neck, because she said she didn’t have the patience to sit and pin it elegantly this morning.

And the strong winds would only ruin her fine labours anyway. Kylo agrees. And he smiles as he runs his fingers down the woven hair. Stroking the idle curls at her nape. She shivers and smiles.

Smell of honey and lavender heather drifting up his nose. The soap on her hair he takes in as he drapes her new coat up her arms for her. A crushed slate grey with handsome wooden buttons. It’s lined too. Double thick. Luxurious. The sleeves and inside panels are sewn with a heavier sheep’s wool. To keep her warm. She’s almost in tears it’s such a pretty gift.

When he stated it is his duty to see her cared for in every way- she never doubted. This man, in one day, had spared more expense to see her feet kept dry and her coat keeps her warm, than her family had ever cared to see to in her whole life.

She wraps her favourite and only golden shawl around her shoulders for extra warmth. Gloves on her hands and she gathers the canvas bag containing her sketching implements.

Including the box of pencils he’d bought her yesterday. She’d once told him something idle about her sketching endeavours, at some stiff supper party or other, and he’d paid close attention.

He takes the bag from her and they head out the tavern, bidding good morning to Mrs. M as they leave. They step out into the cold bright day and Iris smiles as she turns her head skywards to admire the sun on her cheeks. The meagre wind whipping at her hair. She follows Kylo’s lead to the stables where they make for their horses that they’d to have tacked and ready.

A very apologetic stable boy almost quivers in Kylo’s gigantic presence telling them that Kana was lame where she had thrown a shoe yesterday. She needed a poultice of bran, flour and herbs on her left front hoof.

A rock from the road had stuck into the soft of her sole as a consequence rendering her reticent, sore, and holding her leg up, guarding it in pain.

Kylo nods and asks to see her, the boy was right. Iris admires something so tender about Kylo gently examining the mares foot. Tutting kind words at her. Stroking her shoulder. No qualms about getting in muck and mud to see to his animals.

He gives the boy ten shillings for his time. He takes off his cap to Kylo. Seemingly shocked by his kindness. Most English Lords were not received with kindness in these parts - and Iris has read reams of history books enough to completely empathise why that is. She likes that he’s the exception.

The lad seems shocked moreover that a Lord and a Lady willingly trek into the muck of the musty stable. In with the beasts.

They don’t mind the place. It’s homely nearly. A warm cosy nook. Smelling of old sunshine warmed oak and musty dust. Animal sweat and hay spice up the air. Along with the cool grit of dirt. Sunshine filters milky yellow and patchy through the slices and gaps in the wood.

Kylo finds and soothes Kana. Strokes down her nose with a big leather gloved hand. Says something soft to her in norse that makes her snort as he stroked the arch where he neck meets her back. She shivers at his touch and seems to adore him. The stable boy tells him he’s got a great touch with them. Iris agrees. Blushing when she thought of what those big bad hands were capable of-

Kylo smirks, sensing his wife’s blush. “I’m remarkably gifted when it comes to equine animals.” He smiles.

Turns to his wife and says under his breath in a seductive mutter. “And I’ve got quite a wicked touch when it comes to pretty and naked wives too.” He croons.

Iris blushes and ticks him off with a look that tries to be chiding as she gives the poor mare a handful of oats as a treat. Trying to ignore the heated way Kylo crowds her back into Kana. Caging her into the horse with his body and both palms flat to the horse by her shoulders. Eyes sparking pleasure the way they carve into her like granite knives.

He leans in and drags his mouth slowly to tease over the shell of her ear- she’s glad Kana is there. The poor girl is holding her up. Solidarity for poor females made weak by the salacious Lord Ren.

Seduction of the vampire-

She feels her knees knock when he whispers to her, not caring if the stable lad sees them. Or heard them-

“Something about you in that dress... can’t put my finger on it, but it makes me hunger to get you spread out in the green heather and sneak my hand up your skirts, between those sweet thighs...” He whispers. Tongue wickedly licking her ear. She grips onto his wrist where his fingers brushed an erotic dance up her thigh over the wool of her skirts.

That throbbing between her legs returns with a ferocity unrivalled and she barely contains the way those words make her spine race with blissful desires. Mainly ones that involve his hips nestled inbetween her thighs again.

Their moment is loudly cut short. Erland kicks up opposite with the most immensely juvenile fussing at being so blatantly and rudely disregarded.

He snorts and stamps and fusses. The stable boy told Kylo he was a magnificent beast of a horse, he’s never seen the like - a little on the strong and stubborn side though. Far too willed and determined for his own good.

Kylo’s rolling his eyes. Considering putting more coin in the boys hand to compensate for the trauma of dealing with the difficult animal.

“Tell me something I don’t know. Most uncooperative creature on four stupid legs.” He tells the lad with great suffering. Erland snorts loudly at his Lord and master. Defiant.

“ _Oh_ , hush you. He’s a soft thing really.” Iris coo’s at her husband.

She sidles in over to the big dark stallion to stroke his nose and his tail flicks and swishes happily. The fussing stops for he’s soothed now. All it took was Iris’s smile and her hand stroking between his eyes or at his strong arched neck.

Kylo tilts his head and raises a sardonic brow at Erland. His black eyes glitter back with knowledge and demonic glee at his master as Iris finds a magic spot on his velvety chin.

Could a horse look so demonic with glee? This one could. Especially as it had his wife wound around its canny, clever little hoof.

He’s trying to rest his gigantic lumbering head on her shoulder. Nuzzling and nudging her. Nickering at her neck. Iris is patting his head. _For gods sake-_ the silly beast was acting like a whimpering, love-sick puppy, willing and waiting to be rescued from a puddle.

Kylo narrows his eyes more at the idiotic colt. Leaning on the stall opposite. Elbow slung off the stall wall casually. One leg crossed over the other.

“I don’t know what you’re so smug about. We’re both riding you, you great brute. And I’ve asked Mrs. M to make up an incredibly heavy hamper.” He teases. Iris gives her obstinate husband a look.

“And you call Erland, stubborn?...” She says cunningly. Kylo pinched her ass as he walked past to get to his misbehaving beast.

He steps up close and yanks nicely on Erland’s bridle, sliding his fingers under the noseband. Bringing his long face level to his. Pointing accusingly into his steeds eyeline. As of chiding an errant child caught with his hand in the jam jar.

“Now listen here, you flea bitten old measle.” He begins.

“It is appallingly bad manners to steal a man’s wifely affections off his beloved, on his own honeymoon.” Kylo warns into his creatures face.

The flea bitten measle bites and nibbles at Kylo’s coated shoulder without the merest intimation of apology or shame.

Trying to nudge him out of the way to get back to her again for more fusses and ear scritches.

He even resorts to biting Kylo’s coattail to try and drag him aside. Kylo flicks his ear in response. Erland aims for a gentle head-butt nudge in revenge, but Kylo and his impressive reflexes sidesteps in time. Erland gets his own back even more by snorting loudly into Kylo’s hair and messing it all up.

Iris smothers her laugh back behind a gloved hand. They’re bickering like a pair of spoilt children. Especially when the lad brings them their picnic hamper and Kylo fastens the wicker thing onto Erland’s back - with far too much glee. Muttering something about how Iris stole not only his heart - but his horse aswell.

He holds out for her hand when he’s done stacking Erland up with their things, and she steps up and takes it.

Erland lowers for her and Kylo to help get her on the leather padded saddle seat. She rides side saddle for now. He doesn’t mind if she rides astride when they’re alone and out of sight - in fact he’d encourage it. It’s certainly safer.

The fact that would put her ass directly in front of his hips and his cock is utterly none-withstanding... of course.

Erland straightens to full height. And shifts away when Kylo’s trying to put his foot in the stirrups and haul himself up.

His devious idiot of a steed trying to not-so-subtlety tell him there was no more room.

Iris laughs and pats the horses neck. “Erland. You fiend.” She accuses.

Stilling him with attention so Kylo can grab on and hoist himself up. Iris pulls his arm and likes when the comfort and solid weight of her husband enclosed around her back.

She very much likes how his mouth lowers to her ear. And his gloved hand rests heavy and comforting on her hip - even through her coat. All his touches had been over clothes and they still set her afire with want. He guides the reins around her body to hold them back. Guide this massive pest beneath them.

“Comfortable?” He husks in her ear.

Erland whinnies as if in complaint.

“No, not _you_.” Kylo snaps at him. Face full of thunderstorms glaring down at him.

She turns her head back, looks over her shoulder and sees his chin is at her cheek. “Perfectly.” She tells him.

“Walk on. You fool-born menace.” Kylo grits under his teeth. Displeasure evident.

The lad opens the doors for them and Kylo boots into Erland’s round side. Sets him off at a slow walk. Manoeuvres him out the stable doors. Into the open air under the open sky. They turn right down the road to the Inn and off up into the frost- browned peaks.

The wind carved around them all and they start off on the rocky highland roads. Cutting through glens. Over hills and old crumbling stone bridges, over heather and through babbling brooks and streams.

Green cresting hills cutting jagged into the white sky made gold and pink, by dry tossing wind and harsh sun and far too much rain. A land sustained heartily by the brutal weather that batters it.

Iris pressed back into him when a particularly biting wind brushes over them. Folds her shawl tighter around her.

Kylo draws her in. Hand on her stomach, he pulls her tighter to his front. Her hips to his thighs. Folds his own coat around her. Chin resting down on her shoulder. Rubbing his lips and his nose into her. He wasn’t hot blooded. But he’ll endeavour with everything he has to keep her warm.

Iris leans back into him. “Is your master always this needy, Erland?” She asks with a contented sigh as she sinks back into the firm cradle his body offered.

His head bows over her shoulder and she tangled her fingers gently in those grabbable raven locks.

He moans into her cheek. It travels in a hum along her jaw. Sinking to her bones and vibrating to the core of her being that quivers with phenomenal love of him. She gasps and her breath skips.

“If I am needy, I am unashamed of such a thing. For you made me so.” He kisses her cheek. She smiles and takes her hand out his hair, and he suddenly aches and misses the touch.

It’s madness- he’s all over her and he’s missing her.

He abandons Erland’s reins and they loop in her lap. Both his hands span her hips and tug her back. Slipping her ass back right into the cradle of his spread thighs.

Allowing the curve of his semi-hard manhood to brush against her soft ass through her wool skirts. A flicker of animalistic lust courses powerfully through them both.

“You’ve no idea how much I’m contemplating a tumbling romp in the heather with no one around.”

“Really my lord?” She laughs suddenly as he nibbles on her ear. Still rubbing her hips back onto his cock.

“Absolutely.” He growls. “I believe I told you my love, you’ve a beautiful cunt. I only want more and more, and _more_ of it.” He kisses into her neck. She’s shocked and blushing at his language.

“Kylo.” She tells him off. His smirks a naughty teasing bite over her jugular. He senses her disbelief in her voice.

“I’m deathly serious. I’m willing to bet on it. By all the little freckles on your gorgeous round ass I admit I’m being truthful.” He admits. Drawing a cross over the barren bony cage of a desolate plain, where his beating heart once lay.

“I don’t have freckles on my-“ she blushes. Twists back around to try and catch sight of him. One of his hands remains on her hip. He smirks at her blush “Do _I?_ ” She squeaks.

He looks cunning.

“I can’t say with certainty. I haven’t studied the area in question. I’ll have to do a more, throughly circumspect inspection later on.” His hand sneaks down to said territory and slips under her flank to give a firm squeeze. Marking his terrain with touch and caresses.

She heats right to her core at the thought of him examining her naked body with the fine tooth comb of his omnipotent golden eyes.

He leans in and nibbles a kiss at the nape of her neck. Tries to put out his mind the image of getting her on all fours and biting the scruff of her neck as he ruts her, like he’s seen the wolves do. That animalistic mating act.

His breath ruffles her neck. Scorching her neck whilst all this cold wind buffets all around them. It brings her a big gust of his cologne to wrap around her. Juicy ripe blackberries and brambles, pine and sandalwood. Sweet and woodsy and forest.

She shivers in pleasure as his mouth and nose nudges down her ear as Erland clops them gently over the brown heather glen. No one in sight around for miles. Just the mountains and hills and the thick thrashing swaying grass.

He scans around them. They were in the middle of a clutch of high hills. Looking down into the valley beyond. The hills are dark crops of rock along the horizon. The sky is as blue as a cornflower. The grass and heather so soft underfoot it was a squashy thick carpet of emerald and golden toffee brown. The loch winks at them in the sun. Laying sluggish and sharp in the middle of the hills like a mirror shard.

The velvet plains of emerald fields guarded by stubby trees below in the valley. The hill they climbed gave them this rich view. A wind tossed Highland under a clear unblemished powdery sky, in all her glory.

“Will here do, dove?” He asks. Calling Erland to a stop. Tugging him to halt. Iris scans around the breath-taking vista. The wind snuck right into her lungs and stole it away.

She still can’t get over the vast enormity of this simple earthy terrain. She thought england couldn’t excite her anymore. But in a handful of days with Kylo she’s seen so much more of it than she could ever have imagined existed.

She’s drunk golden cider in a public house sat opposite him on a warm wooden bench in the pouring sunshine. And she’s laughed til she snorted at something he’d said to the Landlady who seemed most shocked to see them dining alone together. Commented snarkily and he shot a smirking retort right back at her.

She’s only shared a bed with him for one night and she’s never felt more cosy or safe. Or cherished. Even sitting reading a book near him in the same room becomes a whole new occupation. It’s been transformed from a dull into a divine thing.

“Here’s excellent.” She smiles. He kisses a growling smooch onto her jaw. Before the cool of him at her back disappears. He slides off Erland’s saddle and grabs the tartan rug and spreads it out across the heather.

It sinks down on the crush of the long whipping grass. He steps back across and sets down their hamper to weight down the blanket. In this roiling wind he couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t sail away without something to pin it down.

Then he turns back to help her down from his stallion. Both hands held out for her to grasp. She gathers her coat and swings her legs around Erland’s side where he is.

Takes his hands and drops to the heather below, enveloped in his arms. He catches her before her shoes even hit the ground. Arms right around under her bottom. Tightly holding her. Her hips pressing into his stomach.

She places her hands on his shoulders and he almost arched her back in three where he leans forwards and buried his lips into the rosy curve of hers. Catching her in his arms. Now he’s capturing her into a sultry kiss. A truly lovely kiss- he’s humming his pleasure as their mouths meet. Savouring. Delighting.

Shivering with lust that neither of them are even remotely close to sating just yet.

She cups the handsome curve of his jaw and feels his smile crease up the sides of his face. He pulls back and she nuzzles into that lovely big nose with her own. “I think I can grow used to having a needy husband.” She remarks. Rescinding her earlier remark.

“Brazen mare.” He mumbles amused and muffled against her mouth.

She’s beaming with joy and kisses him again. Softly. Innocently. He welcomes it and runs his tongue along the seam of her lips. He does what he’s good at; being ferocious with his passion for her.

Something hard and heavy. Hairy and wet velvet and smelling of old hay, nudges across her shoulder. They pull back from the engulfing amour of their kiss and realise Erland is trying to come between them to prevent it.

Iris laughs. Kylo is not as amused. With a big gloved hand, he pushes Erland’s giant jaw and snout out the way of rudely snuffling his nostrils into his wife’s ear.

“I ought have you taken away and boiled for glue. You fetid old nag.” Kylo tells him as he places his love gently to the floor.

Unlacing more things from his colts back. Grumpily ranting on to Erland about the dangers of the big horse stopping him from kissing his wife. _His_ Lady. He reminds Erland that he was once a Viking warrior in charge of armies that conquered the world twice over.

Erland swishes his bristled long tail and hits Kylo square in the back. The big man grunts and growls in displeasure at the creature.

“First thing tomorrow. You’re going to the knackers yard you great intemperate cuillion. And I hope they make dog meat out of you.” Kylo huffs at him.

Erland snorts. As if daring him to do it. Knowing Kylo would fall short. He’s far too fond of animals to subject them to such an end.

“Now now, gentlemen.” Iris soothes the tense static of all-male teasing and banter. As she sits down on the blanket and unwraps her sketching implements from her canvas bag.

Bringing out brushes and quills. A pot of ink. Some mishap pen sticks of charcoal, pencils, a small wooden board with pins to secure the paper, and a small pumice for blemishes on the paper.

She opens the new box of pencils kylo had fetched her from the innocuous little high street. She touches a fingertip to the fine things with a fond smile. And looks up to her husband as he lowers himself and sits on the folded up rug beside her, acting as a cushion that he sits on. She’d done the same with one tucked under her derrière. Scottish ground was hard and cold. But the view made it worth suffering a slightly sore backside for a couple of hours.

Kylo’s stretching out beside her like a king or a pasha. She’s tucked up safe into her little corner of the rug and he’s so immense, his booted feet stick off the end of it. And he lounges near her as she sits up drawing. One long thick leg kicked out freely, the other bent.

His breeches stretched taut across his thighs and groin as he leans casually back on one elbow. Peering across at her as she forms a slope with her knees and rests the leaning pad there.

She selects a nimble well sharpened pencil and starts skimming it across the page in a jagged line. Forming the shape of the horizon. Kylo watches her look. And sketch. And then look again. Like watching a badminton volley served over and over.

Erland takes a leaf out of their book. Kylo left him loose. Knowing damn well the fool wouldn’t wander off. After growing bored of eating the dewy brown heather around him - not much to his taste. He preferred the fine scottish oats on offer hereabouts.

He turns and walks around the rug, crossing from Kylo’s side, to Iris’s side of the blanket. He circles in place for a moment like a picky canine. Before walloping his massive body down. To sit beside her. Making gentle snorts of contentment. Head proudly up and sat by his Mistress. Iris reaches across and strokes his nose.

“Toadying git” Kylo shoots across at the beast. Glaring sharply from his spot.

He could’ve sworn Erland looked smug. If indeed a horse could possess the capability to look smug-

He sits and enjoys the silence and the view beside his wife. He watches her narrow her eyes and tilt her head. Scrutinising the shade and crevices and lumps and bumps of the hillside she’s drawing.

“I didn’t know I married an accomplished artisté.” Kylo smiles as he leans closer behind her. Plucking a kiss on her coated shoulder and because he’s a very sinful creature. He sneaks another up her jawline and moans where it lands.

“I fear you are in grave danger of over-exaggerating my talents, my darling.” She says in a levelling manner.

His elbow leaning down across her back and his chest brushing into her side. She holds her fingers off the page so she can have a look. For some reason, Kylo enjoys the sight of graphite, silver and grey cloud of it, dusted across her fingers and hands. She kept pursing her lips to blow little flecks of it off the page.

Something soothes him knowing he doesn’t have an ineffectual mindless lemming of a wife. She has an occupation. She isn’t lifeless now she’s a married woman. In fact, she has more life. It was supposed to be the other way around.

Iris is studious, and has an inquisitive mind. Has read many books of many languages and can spout out enough facts and detailed knowledge of history to even rival him. She can ride and sew and sketch. She can be witty and have a tongue like sharp vinegar and a frown like thunder, storm clouds gather in her eyes when she wants, and she can more than readily take care of herself, and more importantly, she likes to take care of all those around her who she loves.

He smiles at the little squiggle of horizon she’s drawn. A perfect shaded match to the rocks behind the glen and the loch. “I’m not exactly going to make Raphael quiver in his boots.” She decides. “But I’ve always liked sketching now and again.” She tells him.

“Mother made me take up embroidery work instead. Because it was unseemly and unbecoming for their family paragon of marriage to have graphite smeared all over her hands and sores and calluses from holding pencils.” She tells him. Scribbling away as she talks.

“I drew a lot when I was younger. Scrappy little pieces of parchment paper Father discarded. I’d draw snails and violets from the woods and bluebells. Snout moths, the rabbits, leaves I dried and pressed from the elm trees. All sorts.” She tells him.

Every new piece of information she revealed about her mother made Kylo want to get up. Dust off his trousers. Ride back to Hampshire by tea time and strangle that insolent old bat with his bare hands.

“Anyone who keeps someone from a beloved pastime occupation, ought be flung off the face of this earth.” Kylo tells her seriously. Kissing her shoulder again. Resting his chin there as he watches her pale hands work.

“I utterly agree.” She adds. Holding nothing but contempt in that quarter. For all the days in summer she’d longed to ramble about the woodlands in the sunshine. Aching to hear the crunch and mush of leaves and mud under her boots. And she was instead bade to stay inside and organise flowers. Or embroider vines on a shawl.

“I will say this now; when you get back to Ranlor. I will not be your governess. Or your keeper. Your days will be yours to do with whatever you wish. Spend all day sketching the mice in the dungeons if you should wish. Or come with me and see tenants and farms. I will not hamper upon your time. I have plenty to keep me occupied with servants and butlers and treacherous horses playing upon my time.” He eluded.

“You have a dungeon under your castle?” She asks

“ _We_ have a dungeon under _our_ castle.” He corrects her. She blushes at his gentle rectification.

“I believe it was used to house convicts or ruffians a long time hence. The Lord who owned it before me, was a nasty cruel sort.” He surmised.

Odd. She’d once thought that about him. Before she met him. She figured he’d be a faceless, crass, and severe foreigner. A Lord - to her that meant he would be lofty, snobbish and cold-hearted.

He was none of those things.

She smiles to herself. He watches her lips quirk at the corners. The way she does when she’s amused by something.

He’s seen that little upward curl of her delicious lips so many times. The hiding of her mirth. He’s seen it in golden ballrooms crushed with people, and across elegant candlelit dinner tables; when she had to hide her amusement at spoiled dandies or ridiculous foppish girls. He likes this new shade on her; this liberation.

His pretty dove looked, and sung so divinely, now she was out of her cage.

“If I were to believe the rumours to be correct of when you first arrived in Hampshire, I was told that was where you locked your young virgin brides after seducing them, to sacrifice them thereafter to the devil. Demented souls wailing long into the night and all such horrors.” She japes.

Kylo’s smile grows wide and vicious. “Well of course I have. But they can all pack their bags and vanish, and cease their demented wailing. The only wailing bride I want in my castle now, is _you_.” He assures her. Sneaking another breath stealing-tingling kiss on her neck.

“Preferably it being my name you’re wailing long into the night.” He winks.

“You are shameless.” Iris blushes as she tries to concentrate on sketching the clouds in the sky. Smiling so wide it hurts her cheeks. The wind stings at her smile. He watches curls of her honey-brown hair whip in her face. Tangle in her long svelte black lashes.

“Shameless, needy and greedy.” He compliments himself.

“Although if you are so inclined in a more respectable mind, you can cry out Lord Ren in your climax, if you prefer...” He offers dangerously. His mouth hovering near her ear; his voice all smoky-crooning and honey. Smell of her hair and cold air, all heather and dewy grass, in his nose.

‘ _Lord Ren’_ as he’s fucking her like an animal in heat.

He lets his breath tickle her ear. A ruse designed to tease. She feels her skin blush once more and damns it for being so bloody traitorous.

The thought of her voice, husky and sensual and gasping for breath and more as he’s fucking her senseless makes him skip a breath, it’s so potently erotic a thought. Looking up at him with that pleasured expression on her face. Mouth gaped open as she sighs and cums on his cock.

She turns and catches his lips with her own. Pecks him lightly. Reverently. A light press and then she pulls back. She looks up at her handsome husband. Watches his hair flounced violently about in the strong winds. His eyes fixed in hers.

“I love you.” Iris tells him suddenly. His eyes grow warm. Melt for her. He responds in kind. Cups her hand up to his lips and kisses it.

“I’ve always loved you. Iris. And long will it continue. For all the centuries life gives us.” He declares gently.

“You have a poetic heart. I suspected as such all along.” Iris decides as she pulls back ever so slightly from their kiss.

“Hmm. Maybe I do.” He agrees. “Poetic heart and a cunning brain. A potent combination I believe.” He boasts.

“A dangerous one.” Iris supposed.

Iris swallows. A question lingers on her lips and before her bravery rises to meet it. She asks it. She doesn’t seek permission. She doesn’t shy away. She asks him point blank.

“Have you ever loved anyone else?” She lays her drawing and utensil down for just a moment.

Looks right across at him. They are married after all. She’s sure she’s entitled to seek as to the previous state of his heart.

He tilts his head. The sun chips through the clouds and dapples them briefly. His poor dove suddenly looks all worried. Moonstone steel eyes all big in distress that she’s brooked offence.

“If that’s heedless of me- I. Just. A thousand years on this earth. Naturally my mind is calculating. I suppose I’m not the first?” She asks. Wondering how many he had pledged devotion towards. She imagines the score runs well into the hundreds.

“I have loved one, before you. Only one.” He tells her.

Her mouth hangs open. That can’t be right.

“ _One_?” She checks.

One person. It doesn’t seem possible. She must have misbehaving ears. She can’t have heard him correctly. A thousand and twenty seven years and he’s only loved two people. Including her.

“I’ve liked some of my companions over the years. But I’ve never loved any of them. I’ve never felt as deeply as when I discovered you.” He tells her openly.

There is no lie in his eyes. He’s telling her every ounce of truth.

“Who were they?” She asks.

“The demon who made me. His name is Draegan.” He tells her.

The wind feels colder for a second. She’s not sure how. Her spine alights hearing that name. Somehow familiar and strange all at once. An echo dripping through time. It sounds musical to her ears. It spoke of a time long past. Of ancient things and medieval dark magic her mortal heart and self couldn’t possibly comprehend.

Her ears catch on the definitely _not_ feminine pronoun. He’s loved before her and they were male-

He winced in telling her. Watches her carefully. Expects to see her draw back. Matter of fact he expects her to rightly spring to her feet, and storm off after clouting him over the head with her drawing board. Stab the pencils into his eyes for his subterfuge. For loving a man and never telling her.

He’s just laid a big portion of his heart open to her- that’s what she knows. A pinprick of instant shock stabbed her chest. But she sees so much _more_ in his expressive deep eyes.

“What was he like?” She smiles. Carefully checking. Knowing she was manoeuvring around the glassy and glinting, wickedly sharp shards of his shattered heart.

It’s his turn to look taken aback. “You’re not horrified?” He checks.

Maybe she’s schooling her expressions very carefully. He thought young misses in this age, when hearing about those appetites that persuaded some men - appetites and pleasures that are not what they should’ve been - he thought she’d be horrified.

“I’m not so completely green to the world. Sheltered as I may be. My sisters gossip for sport, religion and relaxation. Over the years, not even certain scraps of rumours or speculations about young noblemens taste in partners could be safely concealed from my sisters.” She explains.

“Or our maids. The maids know everything.” She smiles at him. Viewing her husband in no different light.

In fact? She’s rather intrigued. Kylo was so large and strong. Utterly masculine. Handsome and broad of face. She wondered what kind of man this Draegan was, and how they snared each other’s interest. How they were attracted to each other-

It never occurred to her that she should be offended by hearing him admit to such a thing. She doesn’t understand what there is to be offended about. A precious thing.

He’s cherished a person so deeply with his whole heart. He’s made love and been lustful with another man-

Goodness, she sounds like a bawdy house madam and she’s only lain with her husband once.

She does wonder- Kylo in all his dark beauty has attracted much attention she’s not entirely surprised either.

She’d certainly seen some men’s eyes linger on him when he walked into a room. Men whose masculinity was highly speculated upon. Confirmed bachelors, with titles and coronets, with absolutely no mind to marry - she’s seen Kylo censured under their wandering eyes too.

It wasn’t just the women of Hampshire who found him enchanting.

Pride runs rampant through her chest like an odd sort of beast- men and women fawn for this man. And here she sits, plain-Jane-boring Iris Ashton. With her muddy hair and unremarkable cloud coloured eyes and now she’s wearing his wedding ring.

It’s absurd and spoilt minded but it makes her smile a little- she’s wanting to titter with boasting pride.

“Posy once was thrown into despair for weeks to know the young viscount she set her cap for, was caught, in a most unorthodox position, stark naked and very much tangled in his bed with a young farmhand. Subsequently the farmhand was sacked, and the viscount was shipped off on a grand tour by his father and the whole thing was hushed up. I don’t think it exactly helped matters, but last I heard he ran off with an Italian wine merchant named Vincenzo. Poor Posy. She cried herself to sleep for three weeks straight.” Iris tells him.

“You astound me-“ He tells her plainly. Stunned. Which makes her laugh. He couldn’t look more stunned.

“What were you expecting my response to be?” She asks.

”Disgust or abhorrence.” He decides.

“I can assure you. I’m not disgusted or abhorred. Matter of fact I think it’s... well. You’re very lucky to have loved deeply no matter of it was a man or a woman. No?” She checks.

He’s still wrapping his head around how she can understand. She supposed she could scream and rant and curse his name- but she doesn’t want too. She doesn’t see reason in that.

“I grew up in Hampshire, my love. Not under a rock- I concede the two are very similar and moving in that society, was, I grant you, like talking to a bag of rocks. Alas...” She shrugs.

She shrugs. He’s just unloaded the cracked embers of his heart at her feet and she gathers them up and stitched them together. Makes calmness out of the messy and uneasy situation. Takes all in her stride. Effortless.

“What was he like? Your first love? What happened to him?” She asks again. Curious. Kind. As inquisitive as she always is.

Kylo’s swimming in the silver cloud of her curiosity and her affection for him. He knows the depth of her love right there in that enquiry. She loves him so much that anything beyond acceptance of all of him and his past was unthinkable-

Here he was thinking only vampires could love deeply and differently than narrow minded mortals. That their love was only shallow and skin deep.

And then she had to go and open her heart like that and clutch him close- him here, with a thousand years worth of blood dripping off his killing hands, with his savage, uncommon secrets and his nasty temper.

“You truly are different to other young ladies.” He says. Quietly amazed.

She smiles at such deep heartfelt praise. He kisses her brow. Such longing for love of her filled his chest like ice water. Heavy and churning like that Loch below them. Overtaking all the room in his dead veins and icy heart.

“He was-“ He sighs to think of a way to describe Draegan. How to do him justice in words.

“Pale and tall, fair hair and so arrestingly beautiful. I’d always thought so. Stole my breath when I saw him for the first time.” He admits. Blushing a little, rose pink kisses his cheeks. Love and remorse was woven into every word he spoke of him.

He recalls his lover- the frail delicacy of his looks, the paper lily skin and the glass bones of his angular countenance.

Eyes so pallid, like two chips of nearly transparent topaz. He may have looked frail yet he was stronger possibly even than kylo. His strength wasn’t as obvious. But it lay dormant in his bones like pale fire. Beating off him like stinging rain, his ancient worldly wisdom.

“Draegan was like the north wind. Bitter and cold to his enemies. Ruthless to face. But to me, he was always warm and tender. He’s reverent and so infuriatingly temperate. He made being a demon look easy and effortless. He made me fall in lust with the idea.” He admits.

A thought suddenly occurs to Iris- he hadn’t fed in a while. She can’t recall when he last drank. She wonders if she needs to offer something. Would he expect it from her now they’re wed? She didn’t think now was exactly the time to enquire.

“What happened to Draegan?” She seeks.

“I left him.” He tells her. “We were very much in love but after a while I began to feel, manipulated and used. I thought he turned me because of what a warrior I was back then.” He says.

She had his secrets and now she can have his shame.

“It took me the best part of a handful of many years apart to realise that I wasn’t being manipulated at all.” He accepts.

“When he turned me he asked if I wanted power of a hundred men and the strength and speed of a thousand, and he promised me he could give all of it to me. Command armies by his side. He dangled the world on a string and I was greedy and hungry and I snatched it-“ He says with remembrance and disgust.

“Years later. I had him. I had the world. I conquered and slaughtered to own every part of it that I wanted, and it simply wasn’t enough anymore-“ He accepts.

“So I came to my supposed senses and I severed all ties. I packed my things and saddled my horse and I didn’t even stop and say goodbye to him.” He explains sadly. Swallowing down his disgust with himself at the memory.

Maybe that’s the reason he can’t stand warm climates or stuffy cloying air. Lands baked dry by too much sun. He preferred the frost and the bite of snow. That weather that had populated his viking childhood.

Draegan always did much prefer the inescapable vitamin drenching of the suns heat.

He’d left Draegan on a hot summer night too. Maybe that’s also why he can’t stand humidity and sun-

Wind drifting full of spice and jasmine flowers from his marble temple by the tepid sea. Under the winking watch of a velvet black sky guarded by a million sprinkled stars, Kylo mounted his horse and felt vengeance and anger stab a stake into his heart, more and more, with every pound of his horses hooves upon the dusty road, the one that wound him over the plains and further and further away from him.

Conveyed him away on the rusty red ribboning road of his freedom.

He didn’t look back to smell the tantalising salt of the sea and sun baked lemons, carried on the breeze. The jasmine petal scent turned rotten in his nose and he turned away in disgust from it. Well aware a pair of topaz eyes were watching him as his stallion ran him away into the night.

He didn’t look back to see that sheen of a white-haired, sylph like figure, stood on the terrace and shrouded in stars. Watching him go and unable to snatch him back.

Kylo never stopped to contemplate that he was then shattering Draegan’s desolate heart.

Kylo ran until he couldn’t feel his eyes pressing on him anymore. Sticky and shining through the midnight ink dark, like pearls.

He ran until he lost all memory of his voice, his touch. Day by day even his face faded from his mind. He laughed his gladness and gorged himself on his new freedom.

Iris’s soft woolly little heart panged with pain for him. She watches as he gazes out at the horizon. All forlorn. Big expression watching the clouds pass over them.

She had to reach out and hold his hand. Simply had to hold him in that second. After his confession. She could hear and feel his heartbreak. Parting in anger was always a barbed wound that never heals easily. It festers and rots in the mind once the anger dissolved away like storm-clouds.

“I’m so sorry.” She offers. Because words and love is all she can offer him.

“It’s my shame. Dove. And I ought to feel it. For treating someone I used to love so despicably.” He tells. Reaches across and plucks away a stray hair from sticking on her lashes.

She’s kneeling into his body. Facing him. Clasped close. His other big hand covered her kneecap. This moment is too tender not to be touching.

“I have to tell you- as consuming and as much as I loved him. We couldn’t stay that way. Not truly. Much as we both wished it. We were much too different. Opposites. He was gentle and peaceful. I was angry, brash, and despicably rough. We couldn’t last.” He tells

“So please heed me when I declare very very seriously. Iris. My love. That when I saw you at that godforsaken ball that night, my whole world was rewritten.”

“You called out to every spec of me. You had me from the instant our eyes met and it could never have been any other way. I wouldn’t have _let_ it be any other way. Even if the whole world conspired to keep us apart- I’d have fought every last person to wed you and to love you.” He offers seriously.

Cupping her neck and drawing her close. Making her feel his words as well as hear them.

And _oh_ , how she does-

One graphite smeared hand comes up to clutch at his wrist where his hand touches her.

“You are truly a wonder. Lord Ren.” She remarks with a smile.

“I attribute that purely to the love of the phenomenal woman who changed my heart.” He decides finally.

“She sounds like a remarkably insensible woman.” Iris jokes with him.

He brings her fingers to his mouth. Kisses each one of the silvery smudged tips. She’s already shivering with desire watching those sinfully rosy red lips pucker into her skin.

“She’s excellently clever.” There comes another kiss.

“Wit as sharp as a pin.” Kiss. “Kind to everyone - not just to me.” There comes another kiss. “-She’s entirely too beautiful...” He trails off with another kiss and then he looks excellently rakish as he goes to kiss her thumb.

“And I’m afraid going to have to ravish her, the very second we get back to our bedchamber at the Inn.” He smirks very much like the devil he used to love.

“With such seductive charms. How can she possibly resist?” She smiles along to their little ploy. They’re both glowing with love and affection.

So warmly it could rival the sun peeping out behind the clouds as it casts over them. He steals the sunshine gold off her rosy lips.

She squeaks his name to his mouth in a kiss as he looms over her and presses her under him. Tugs the implements out her hands and tosses them away carelessly. Flings them away. Matter of fact. He hopes Erland chews her pencils.

He rather loves this position. Gets her back flat to the rug below them. Kisses and kisses her and her soft little body presses up into the hard muscle of him. The soft brush of heather and her body cushioned up to him. His chest mashed flat to hers. A heady and throughly lovely sensation.

“You know something?” She asks him. He pulls back and grabs her hips. Nuzzling into her neck and sniffing the addictive tug of her hairs fragrance.

He buries his face into her neck and hums and nudges a smile into her jaw.

“You admitting that you’ve loved another before- I just realised. I’m the first woman you’ve ever loved. Am I not?” She clarified.

His smile is warm honey and roses and his eyes are drowning her in romance. “Indeed you are, Dove.” He’s more than happy to tell her so.

She reaches up and plays with the strands of inky hair around his ears. “You’ll always be the only woman I love.” He says firmly and proudly.

“I feel the same about you, husband. I don’t just marry any old man on a whim you know.” She cheeks him.

He growls a smile as he leans down low to steal her lips again. “That’s enough of your insolence, Lady Ren. Much more and I’ll lift your skirts and do something that would make Erland blush to watch.” He promises.

Slanting wet kisses across her mouth as he speaks. Drowning her in kisses and pecks. He sips the warmth from her lips and drains lovely pleased and divine little sighs out of her.

“Suppose I should I let you get on with your sketches now?” He asks after a few long lazy moments of rolling around and kissing among the thrashing grasses and heather.

Wind and dappled sunshine carving over their tangled bodies. Tangled legs, lips and tongues. Newlyweds caught under that new sparking mania of lust.

They drift eventually into companionable silence. After a few more minutes of rolling around. Groping and squeezing each other. Only stopping the lusting mania when Kylo rolls her over, so she’s on top and clasped to his chest and their very nosy horse tries to nibble at Kylo’s hair again, from his spot sat in the heather.

She sits up and continues her sketching the loch, with a lovely plume of pink on her cheeks that he’s proud to have put there. and Kylo moves and opens the hamper. Inspecting the foods and goods Mrs. M had sent them.

There’s some more of that Rhenish wine and two metal goblets. There’s wrapped cheese, some oatcakes, a half a loaf and some pickled fish. Some fruit, chutney and some cold roast ham cut into thick chunks.

Kylo snatches a rosy apple out the offering and sits and watches her draw across the rug as he eats it. She looks across when she hears the snapping crunch of his teeth break the rosy flesh. She looks across as he tilts his head at her. She absolutely will not think about the way his lips will now taste like sugary sweet sharp fruit.

“I thought you only ate rare meat and drank red wine.” She states kindly.

Kylo’s nudging the rosy apple skin out from being wedged inbetween his teeth with his tongue. His front teeth were devilishly sharp. Just like his sanguinary smile.

“I fancied something sweet. A bit of fruit every now and then won’t kill me.” He assures her with a smart grin.

“Well I’m glad to hear of it. I won’t have to sit you down like a little boy and force you to eat all your greens.”

Kylo gives her a smoulder of a look at that suggestion. And so Lord and Lady Ren enjoyed their afternoons grazing in the heather. As did Erland. Nickering where appropriate for food when Iris began to eat some of their excellent packed picnic.

Kylo plied the horse with oats til he stopped his whining. They feasted on strawberries and berries. Fresh baked bread, cheese, the honey roast ham and oatcakes.

Erland was very appreciative of Iris sneaking him a quarter of one. Kept nudging her for more. Kylo gives her a warning look that told her she’s skating dangerously close to spoiling him.

The weather churns in the sky. Shifting from dappled sun and clouds to a cold chilling wind and they stay until Iris finishes her sketching - drawing a few of the plum purple thistles and plucking a few to press to forever remind her of her time in Scotland.

They pack up as the sky above bruises darker and darker. Wind howling more ferocious. The sun struggled to break through the clouds, which lay murky and haunting in the sky like a harrowing-dense spectre.

Kylo packs everything onto a grumbling horse who had suddenly decided that pack horse duty was now below him. Erland kept grumbling and stomping as Kylo led him back across the heather.

They started back upon a different route to the one they’d taken to come here. One that led them over the glen and back around the rocks and through a balding wild grass meadow, patched with bogs and oozing puddles of wet wet highland mud.

Kylo was leading Erland around them as he and Iris talked. He held out a hand and helped her unpick her shoe from a sticky swallow of mud that tried its best to claim her foot.

He made it look effortless- she smiles and watches him lead his intemperate horse around a boggy patch. The mud within was scummy and wet and stagnant grass and moist sluggish earth filled her nose. The glen trickled down to a small brook. Muddy banks and a steep slope to be manoeuvred with caution. Kylo leads Erland down, walking in front of him. Reins in his grip.

They were talking about the villages around Ranlor and he was just telling her about the woods - and then suddenly he wasn’t.

She was looking down to step over some ragged rocks and a deep boggy patch that sucked at her shoes, when she heard a wet slip and and a gust of breath and a slapping of a thudding body - a great muscled warrior wedge of muscles - impacting the water and mud.

Kylo caught himself on his hands and knees. But he’d been nudged down and helped along by a devilishly cunning horse. His knees and coat tails now thoroughly soaked in mud and water.

“Oh-“ Iris picked her way quick over the bank. A gust of breath falling out her mouth.

“Iris I’m well, don’t-“ He turned on his knees and raised his muddy soggy hands up. Soggy mud dripping off his fingers.

She gets to him and holds out a hand perched precariously on the bank. But she sockets her foot into the grass behind herself and leans forward to help heave him back up. His booted foot landed solidly in the bog and she hazarded it might take some determined yanking to get him out.

“Here-“ She offers her hand. Encased in her grey gloves. She fought off a smirk as Erland whinnied from the bank. Safe and dry. And here her husband had spatters of mud and disgusting scummy water dripping off his face and neck like he’d acquired a new set of pocked moles on his creamy skin.

Down one side and his arm too he’s splashed with it. Up to his knees in freezing muddy water.

“Luckily it hasn’t invaded your boots.” She holds out sunnily as he wipes muddy water from his cheek. A hell of a splash back from his stumble - his _pushed_ stumble.

He chuckles. It had invaded everything but his boots. He sharply twists his head around to glare at Erland. “You’re going to the butchers on the high street you useless equine lump.” He snaps.

He turns and takes his wife’s hand. Though he didn’t need assistance. She didn’t waver on worrying she’d offend his male pride. He rather likes something about that. Something adorable about it makes him feel protected and loved.

She tugs his arm and tries to pull him out the sticky gulley. They manage splendidly-

Until her foot slips on the wet grass and she slips into the mud to join him.

She lands solidly on her cute round ass. All the air thumped out of her as she went down. Splashing into the mud and faking back on her hands and knees. Right into the scummy muddy dirt. Cushioned on a patch of it. Kylo’s socketed too he tries to twist out to help but scottish mire is tricky and stubborn to get out of.

Mud squishes out around her body as she lands. Thudded down onto the earth with a shocked yelp leaving her lips. Mud now in her hair. Streaked and spat up her chin. Her hands and legs are in the bog along with his boots. She gazes across at Kylo and suddenly there’s something truly hilarious about this-

She begins to laugh and so does he. Before long they are both wheezing and trembling with laughter. Iris wipes away tears and then realises she probably just smeared a load of dirt across her cheeks.

“Are you harmed?” He asks through a creased smile that does something delightful to his whiskey coloured eyes.

“I’m alright.” She chuckles. Heaving herself up and out. Clawing through the mud.

He manages to work his foot free and lunge up the opposite bank with what remained of his dignity. He watches her plump muddy ass sway about under the sticking swathe of her coat as she heaves herself up. He takes her arm and brings her close when they get to the other side of the gulley. Letting the worst of the mud drip and patter off them.

Erland skips over the river like a dainty summer breeze. Trots past them and over to a patch of long dewy highland grass. Nibbles away as if he’s taking a leisurely Sunday stroll on Kensington common.

“Iago.” Iris calls after him. He offers nothing but a tail swish.

She looks at her ruined gloves with disdain. Wet and mud and porous calfskin was not a great mix. Kylo smiles in sympathy and cups her grey hands with his muddy ones. “I’ll buy you more. Ten, twenty more pairs of gloves.” He promises. Unsticking a soggy curl of hair from off her brow.

“One is enough.” She smiles.

“You must think like a Lady now. Lady’s own lots of gloves.” He points out.

“You’re truly alright?” He asks again in mirth as they hurry across to Erland. Now wet and damp and the wind stings crueller on wet wool coats. She’s limping from her sore fall - landing with a thump on her now bruised ass.

“I lived in the country for twenty three years. I can handle a spec of mud.” She tells him. He wanted to kiss her hard right then but drat it all to hell- he’s just too damn dirty.

She takes everything on so easily. He truly has married a remarkable woman.

They quickly mount Iago the inclement. Her first. He swings up after, and Kylo rides Erland hard back across the glens before the storm clouds gather any worse.

Kylo doesn’t apologise to the equine spawn of Satan, for working him hard, but he does pull Iris closer when a light shower of cold rain just begins to break as they are merely up the road from the inn.

They burst through the stable doors. An array of mud and wet and smelling like a fragrant scottish mire and a field of heather.

The stable lad seems quite shocked at the sight. Kylo tells him to rub Erland down and brush him, even though the big pest didn’t deserve it.

They hide under the canopy of her gold shawl as they make a run for their private entrance. Mrs. M worked hard to keep her Inn clean and neither of them wish to repay their kind hostess by leaving water marks and dirty footprints up the stairs.

The warm air of the inn sizzles and burns at their cold skin as they come indoors. Dripping onto the doormat they stand for a moment. Gazing at each other. Smiling and shaking off the worst of the rain.

Iris could wring out her plait. And she’s stuck with mud and moss and leaves. His hair is almost pasted black to his head.

“What is it with us and getting caught out in the worst English weather has to offer?”

He asks as they look outside and watch sheets and stair-rods of rain shatter across the green hills and glens. Trickling down to fill up the loch from the granite mountaintops. Bleeding back into the earth. The landscape sustaining itself.

“I’m not sure. Maybe we just have an incredibly bad sense of timing?”

They’re suddenly aware they are pressed very closely in the small landing passage that was offered. She’s very aware that he’s looking a down at her. Her nipples seem awfully aware of it too-

They poke and rasp painfully through her chemise like half cut rubies. She’s not quite shivering with cold but something tells her that the dull ache and throbbing between her muddy thighs is more than friction sustained from the bustle of their ride.

She’s squeezing mud and gunky water out of her hair and she flickers her eyes to look up at him. And he is most definitely still watching. Eyes now like a splash of golden whiskey poured over bronze coins.

She watches his chest pull and tug with breath as he undoes his sodden wet cravat and peels it off his neck. Steps closer so their toes brush and leave it trailing down his thigh.

He steps so close that if he wanted too, one peek sloped downwards of his chin, would ensure that he could see right down her chest.

He stuffs his cravat in his pocket and reached for her coat buttons. Thumbs brushing over her creamy breasts - on purpose - pimpled with cold and she’s shivering under his touch. And it’s not because she isn’t warm.

Suddenly the air their sharing is awfully thin. And hot. Very hot. Like standing next to a blazing bonfire hot. Iris swallows and gasps when he tugs on both sides of her lapels and draws her right into his chest. They’ve been sat, her ass wedged to his crotch all morning riding, and now the simmering lust has shattered and reached its boiling point.

“I think we’re both wearing far too many wet clothes. Lady Ren.” He draws out. Makes his words and his tone long, slow and husky.

She gasps out a breathy response. Lust twirling up her spine like dust mites on sunshine. “I concur.”

Her words are mashed into his mouth. He kisses her so passionately only his mouth and the wall is what holds her up. He drags his hands urgently down from her waist to her hips. Rocking her soft thighs into his hardness. He growls so loud she feels it’s hum pierce down in her bones.

They stumble, lust drunk and full of hormones and pheromones clashing. He’s throbbing and she can’t pretend she isn’t pulsing for tasting more of the blissful pleasure he unleashed on her last night.

He shoves open the door to their chamber and cups her neck as he kisses and stalks her backwards through it. Slamming the door after them with a kick of his foot.

They stagger backwards. Gripping and groping for whatever patch of skin is closest. Both their coats get shoved to the floor with a heavy wet slap. Iris gingerly pulls his shirttails out his breeches. Untucking the damp muddy linen from the tight cinch of his black damp breeches.

His brute fingers work quickly to unlace the back of her forest wool dress. And look at her now, he’d thought about her earlier in the forest with bark and leaves and nature. And here she is all pale and muddied and he has to have her- no amount of dirt will change his mind.

He spreads her out on the bed after he works off his slippery boots and she helps him claw his shirt over his shoulders and off his arms.

She peels it off as he kisses along her jaw and rips open her stays. Actually rips them. She gasps a pleasured sound. He grumbles that they were in his way. They’d paid with their life. Fair was fair.

They disrobe each other quickly. Unmusically shoving and pushing things away. Iris grows annoyed with her layers. He’s almost furiously pushing down her petticoats as she struggled with the buttons on her chemise. Her lustful busy fidgeting hands kept slipping. Too quick. Too needy.

She managed to sit up. Half naked on the rumpled sheets of their bed. Half naked body kissing into the fur pelt on the bed. It felt like some odd unfamiliar luxury next to her naked warm skin. Kylo throws her chemise to her hips and is on one knee tugging open her garters and tearing off her prim ivory white stockings.

Desperately nuzzling kisses to her thighs. He moans gladly and crushed her into another smiling kiss when she bunches up the cotton chemise over her hips.

The slice of a curve of a rounded pale thigh meeting her hip drives him temporarily deaf and insane. He wants to bite at that pallid patch of lovely plump flesh and leave purple teeth marks behind to sting and remind her who she belongs too.

Litter little vampire kisses all over her perfect body.

She throws the chemise over her shoulders and he growls with gladness. Throwing down his breeches as he opens his falls, rigid hard cock tumbling out. Red, swollen and weeping precome for her.

She does gasp again because she’s catching her first real glimpse of her fully naked husband. Fully naked and fully _aroused_ -

Her mouth hangs open a touch because he is just as stocky and large as every other part of his body. Thick trunks for legs. Bulky arms. A back that spanned twice the width of her body. And now she knows for certain that his cock too fits this description.

Raw red, curved, utterly long and pulsing erect between his thighs. She admires him for only a moment as he works his trousers off his chunky calves and kicks them away. Pressed her into the bed and the fur pelts. Something so animal and Viking like seeing her tiny body against the grey fur pelts. It’s making him feel ruttish.

He grips her behind the knees. Pulls her tight to him. She squeaks in surprise as he shoved them across the bed so he could be on top. Before his big fingers wander between her legs again and he groans loudly. A delicious sound that crawls along her spine like hot treacle.

“Dove. You’re dripping.” He gasps roguishly. Smiling against her neck as he mouthed his smiling smug and hungry way to her hard cold nipples.

She quivers under his too hot tongue. Blazing hot syrup and sweet against her hard peak. She cries for him. A cacophony of pleasure sailing out her sweet lips. And he’s the orchestrater of such pretty music.

He doesn’t care that they’re covered spattered in mud and dripping damp from the rain. He starts to guide inside her. She’s wet down her soft inner thighs to her knees. He doesn’t doubt her readiness and she’s turning him on like nothing he’s ever felt before.

“I’ll go slow.” He pants. Pushing into her slowly. Piercing her sweet lips open and rippling desire and lust right through her. Her toes curl and she’s absolutely breathless for more by the time he’s got his hips flush to hers.

“Please. Kylo please, oh please.” She sighs. Her knees clasping his body. Drawing him in closer. Nails raking his back with the pleasure of it. She’s quivering so much her words stammer out her throat. She wants friction and heat and the delicious weight and pressure of him writhing against her.

He smiles down at the pure babble of need that’s skating out her rosy lips. They’re all flushed rubbing together and and writhing on a wolf pelt. He’s cursing every old god he knew under the sun with how good and wet she feels. Tighter than a velvet fist around him.

“Oh my dove. Your pretty cunt feels good gripping me so-ah, hard.” He heaved out a breath. Thrusting shallowly. Pumping and grinding up against her.

Watching her body sway and her tits thrusting with the rolls of his hips as he fucks into her. Nipples rosy and tasting like cherry wine. His mouth salivates to bite and nip them and hear some of those gorgeous _gorgeous_ screams.

He pulls back up to watch her moan below him. He nudged into her jaw and kisses her. Sucks over her hammering pulse and mumbles a curse at the delicious taste of blood under her flushed skin. Her long neck all prickled pink and blotchy. Much the same as his chest as they rub together. All sweat slicked and still pocked with mud and cold.

Divine. Wife. Goddess; _Mine_. The beast inside him snaps.

He drags his eyes off her and watches how he pumps himself into her. Smells the sweet honey of her cunt as it flutters and twitches around him. Her thighs all sticky wet and sheening with her own lust in the half light.

He loves that this is the second time he’s inside her, and already her body is well attuned to respond to him. His vampire virility called to her pheromones and her sex and now she’s dripping whining and begging for him. And he’s delighted by it.

She arched her head back to cry his name as he wound a thigh around his hip and started hammering his hips deeper. Grinding them together. Steel length of his pounding her silky petaled heat. The way he tilted her hips with his big all knowing hands, made her body yield to him just that tiny fraction more. He cups under the soft plump ass he’s been eyeing all morning and-

Perfection.

He writhes and groans loud with it. Long and slow and her little gasps and puffs of breath indicate her pleasure too. He’s taking her hard and fast and she opens her mouth and tangles her fingers in the sweaty dark hair at his nape. Voice hoarse with desire.

“Please. Don’t stop...” She sighs. So lovely and sweet. Like a sprinkle of sugar on his tongue.

“I’ll never stop.” He grunts as he delivers a particularly brutal thrust that sets her wailing. She clutches his hair so hard it’s blissful fire on his scalp. He huffs and licks and sucks along her corded throat. Hands not abandoning her ass so he can still pump her fast and deep. Slamming all those wonderful spots inside her.

He couldn’t help groaning feeling their wet sexes slap together with her soaking slurping lust. Nevermind her staining her thighs, she’s so wet she’s staining his too. He can smell that feminine tang of her aroused cunt in the air and he’s cursing himself not to finish rudely early.

His eyes don’t know which pretty part of her to watch. Her face. Her pale breasts as they jolt with his severe thrusts. The way her cunt swallows him deep. It’s a hard choice. They’re both tumbling and arching towards phenomenal bliss.

“Iris.” He moans. Her name is a furious mantra clinging inside of his head. Ye gods. He’s bewitched and obsessed and she’s the cause and the cure. He’ll have to burn twists of sage to rid himself of her sorcery. _Iris. Iris. Iris._ The beast inside him chants her rhythm.

“My sweet love. You feel exquisite. Cum for me. Please cum for me.” He sighs as his mouth slants against her collarbones. Sucking and tugging with his smiling mouth. Stinging her with teeth.

She’s sobbing for him. Her whole body calls to him and tightens when he says her name. As they fuck and twitch and rut in tandem. Her sweet sex spilling out of him onto the fur pelt below. He can smell her and feel her squeeze and swallow his cock deep in her crushing silk pink walls and it’s the undoing of him.

He came hard. Relentlessly so. Climax came upon him so sharp and frenzied he almost forgets to breathe. He buries his mouth in her neck to muffle his loud cries as he feels her hands scrabble for his back and leave raw fiery scratches.

His hips jerked with each wrenching spasm inside her. His pleasure went on and on. Approaching forever and never seeming to be enough. He wanted more.

He wanted to stay inside her and fuck another load of his cum into her to see if that helps his furious white hot need. The beast that pounds through his blood demanding more. More pleasure. More rutting. More cumming. _More Iris._

Her pleasure struck as his did. And she cums in wrecking, wracking sobs and broken glass moans tumble shattered from her mouth. It’s sharp and inescapable. She forgot where she was- forgot who she was.

In the passionate moment it was nothing but them two. Twined with desire of their joining. Flushed and sweating. Floating on a warm sea of fur pelts and silks and rose petals and every exotic bliss that this moment rightfully deserves.

And she milks him of every creamy drop til he wants to beg to be set freed. Desire and bliss so potent he cries out loud. And she follows his example. Sighing and gasping and her lovely corded neck is stretched back. Dappled in sweat. Her fingers still knotted in his hair as he finished spurting deep inside her.

He collapses over her. Weakened and emptied. Holding his weight off her dazed limbs. Pleasure still fogging up their brains and mouths. Lazy bliss takes over once the consuming pleasure fades away like dying embers being extinguished in the half. It’s sizzles and burns and dissolved away in their bodies. Leaving damp and glorious fulfilled sating in its wake.

She shifts her hips and gasps when she feels his still hard cock burrow deeper into the tight channel of her. He sighs as the pleasure finally recedes.

“ _Fuck_. I love my wife.” He chuckles into her shoulder. Sighing it with pleasure. Kissing her.

Dragging his wet mouth across her shoulder and slipping to tug and swirl his greedy tongue around her still hard nipples. Tip of her nipple hard as a half cut ruby under his tongue.

He nuzzles into her and makes no move to un-join their bodies. They are too tangled. Too warm. Too in love.

He finds her mouth eventually. Drags her into a lazy kiss. Hands still fondling and cupping her round ass. Hums into her as they lazily embrace. As the heat of their fucking dissipated. She reaches for the rug they pushed off the bed and drags it up over his shoulders. Feeling the cords and hills of bone in his back where he’s over her.

The rain patters the window and the lit fire in the half roars amber and red gold. They listen to that symphony of sounds as they gasp for breath. Her heartbeat clashes thudding time against his ribs.

He lifts his hands from under her and strokes her damp hair out her neck. Shoves his nose into a dry patch of it and inhaled her scent. Scottish wild highlands and rainy mud beats off her with her lavender heather soap scent. He breathes in the wilderness and adores it.

“I’ve a feeling that poor maid will hate us for the amount of times we call for hot water for a bath.” She decides as she strokes her nails over his scalp.

He smooches a indolent grin onto the corner of her lips and tastes the shape of her blush smile.

“I’m going to have to start schooling you Into behaving like a true lady of gentility. You will be pampered and spoiled and you will enjoy every second.” He threatens into her lips with a lazy kiss. Sucking her lips with his generous lush mouth.

He tastes like rain and a lost hint of sharp sour-sweet fruit.

She chuckles. Toes curling where he kisses over her jawbone. She flutters with squirming giddy sensation. “Well. Then I must be failing already. Because I also believe that Lady’s of gentility aren’t supposed to thoroughly enjoy the act we just committed.”

He chuckles as he nips her neck. Unable to resist her taste and scent as always. Doubly so now delicious lust and potent pheromones haunt her blood.

“My Lady is always allowed to admit to enjoying that. In fact- I insist on it.” He smirks. Curling her into his hold and splaying them out in their cosy bed as thunder begins to rumble and crush over the horizon.

He runs his hand over her cooling clammy skin. Feeling her ample softness. He’ll call for a bath. Later- perhaps.

For now there is just her skin and her love and her kisses that he’d die for. He buries his face in her neck and he is content to lose himself there for a long slow and sleepy while.

~


	20. Lycanthropy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of full moon naughtiness here 👀🌙

When Kylo wakes her the next morning, it is with a whisper of a kiss pressed to her forehead.

She slept snugly in his chest, in the enfold of his arms. Tangled and knotted in bedsheets and her legs lay impossibly entwined with his. There’s no telling where he begins and she ends. They are much too entangled. Iris wonders how it hasn’t always been this way.

She just knows she wakes up sighing a smile. With Kylo raining kisses and nudging her head out the way with his nose so he can kiss her throat. Little growls of content fall upon her skin like warm syrup and thorny scarlet roses from his lips; warm and lovely, but husky and sharp.

Dawn heralding to a new day outside the window. A spill of amber across the sky bleeding into an excellent blue. Slants of copper and gold shaft the clear sky. Life starts to warm up around them in the little Inn. The maids arrive and the cook is warming up the stove in the kitchens. The stable lad begins to tend to the fussing colts under his care in the stalls.

She’s just on the edge of consciousness. When kylo slants his lips to her ear. His voice rumbles at her like the deepest shattered splinters of granite. “I have a surprise for you today.” He promises. She can hear and feel his cunning smile.

“What would that be husband?” She asks. He gets a little flutter of something proud and boastful flickering at his stomach with the way she refers to him.

He smiles secretive to himself. Nuzzles into her back of her neck and smells her hair. Cosy musk of it from sleep and the spice of her heathery floral soap. His smile nestled in the crook of her neck.

Matter of fact, he says nothing. Not one word until they’re both atop and astride Erland once again. Clopping gently along biscuit dusty country lanes under a clear sky. A chilling wind wrapping around them as they huddle closely together. His hand curling around her hip feels natural now, she doesn’t see how she could ever ride a horse again and not have that sensation of his palm covering her.

He admits to nothing. Nothing, nothing, and still nothing.

Not until they’ve been riding for a while and suddenly the wind changes. It dances with notes and fragrance of something Iris can’t place. Brine and salt. Something sodden and rotting green and bitter.

Then there comes the rushing crash of waves. The sound of ocean and rocks and pebbles on sand being dashed by a receding frothing tide. He smiles. And his mystery is revealed.

Where the grass of the field ahead of them tumbles away. Pale gold creeps along the cobalt space edging the sapphire emerald sea, between the water and the clear cornflower sky. Jagged granite sprouts out the earth and the water in great hulking splinters of dark rock. Tumbled and jutting over the horizon.

That scent was the foam and the salt whipping off the ocean in curling sprays of wind. Salt baked by sun and swimming in that ocean with the green fauna of those waves, waxy tumbled ropes of seaweed lay claggy and drying on the shore. Baked to leathery strips in the sunshine. Dune grass, dry and brittle, thrashes and hisses in that furious breeze. The frail yellowed hair of it sprouting out the tuscan butter of the rough sands.

They dismount Erland and pick their way gently down the empty dunes leading to the cold beach. The sky looks chowder grey and thick like a silver coverlet in the distance. But still the sea glitters and she delights in stepping onto that golden gold dust sand.

She takes it in deep. She’s never seen the ocean before. He knew this.

Kylo watches her walk out ahead. Watches the wind carve around her skirts and her coat. She left her hair down today. Merely tied half of it back in a navy silk bow, the ribbon is the exact colour of the deepest sapphire black ocean that lay out ahead, and now those free muddy curls riot and toss on the wind. She stands and watches the glitter and shimmer of the sun skipping over the dazzling waves coming in to crash and tug hungrily at the shore. Eating away the wet sand beneath her toes.

Gulls shriek and scream and hover on the wind above. Their cries shatter over the big wide beach. Iris feels the sink of wet sand and gritty tossed pebbles and shells crush at her booted toes as she stands and cant help but admire the view.

Kylo unleashed his hold on Erland and steps up beside his wife. Boots shifting on those very same pebbles and shells and gunky seaweed. He likes feeling the sting of salt and wind kissing his cheeks. Sunshine, meagre as it was, warms their skin as the breeze nips at it. A competition to see what could weather them first. Sting of salt and wind or the heat and burn of sun.

His hand slips for her pelvis again. His whole scent and body covering her back. She can smell the sea and the wind and hear the squalling gulls and then suddenly she’s thrown back into the aroma of the cloaking warm wool of his coat. Juicy sweet blackberries and bramble thorns. Mushed together with green bitter pine and the creamy silky-sunny grain of sandalwood.

His lips kiss the shell of her ear as their boots meet crunching seashells beneath their toes. His hair tossed into the side of her cheek, inky silk, on her skin. Cold leather on her tummy where his hand holds her close. Spanning her smaller body.

“I take it this is a pleasant surprise?” He asks. Surveying the pretty ocean ahead that couldn’t hold a candle to her beauty. No matter how breathtaking. The wind crumbles and cracks and arcs over the sky and she smiles when that same furious beast whips at her cheeks.

“It most definitely is.” She tells him with a salt kissed smile. Spray and brine hisses off the sea before them as they stand on the peaceful stretch in between the jagged rocks of the coast.

They turn around to look when a sudden cacophony of hooves interrupts theirs and the oceans quiet moment of appreciation.

Dull thuds stab into the sand. And Erland storms past them, sand and shells churning and spitting under his hooves as he breaks into a gallop and crashes into the ocean to disturb a flock of seagulls lingering on the beach.

The birds leap to take to the wind with a cry of complaint as Erland snorts and kicks and stomps loudly around. Snorting in irritation at chasing the birds away. He sloshes into the waves and sea foam laps and curls at his knees. Clings to his shiny coat as he struts away proudly.

Iris and Kylo smile as that exact same flock of birds resettle in almost entirely the same spot after the big stallions back is turned.

“That horse is like a very oversized, foolish dog.” Kylo remarks. As Erland hoists his tail high and trots back over to them. Confident and swaggering in the glory of his victory.

Erland walks up to Iris and nudges her with his head - as if to urge her into seeing what a brilliant job he’s done. Iris pats him and doesn’t dash his frail dreams.

“Good boy Erland. Well done.” She accepts as she strokes his nose. Kylo urges the big idiot closer and unlatched their hamper and blanket from his back.

They had a large breakfast so their picnic isn’t as substantial today. Iris had parritch again with sugar and cream and he indulged in a plate of grilled pork chops. He asked for them rare as can be. Today is a day his senses will crave and ache for masses and masses of protein and ichor- today his blood will itch and tonight he knows what he must do.

Their picnic for now is some cranberry and elderflower cordial and iced fern cakes, aswell as some big dark gooey wedges of Dundee cake. A few things to tide them over. Mrs. M still threw in raspberries and rosy apples for them too. She won’t see her guests go hungry, it’s completely inhospitable and unacceptable to have hungry guests. So she told them.

They spread the tartan out on the sand near the dunes, weight the corners down with rocks. Erland speeds over and chases the birds again. A particularly stubborn one tries to peck at him after landing on his back. They laugh from their spot on the rug up near the shelter of the sand dunes and the dry grasses.

The big silly horse provides much entertainment- tries drinking seawater and instantly regrets that decision. Shakes his head at its mineral salt taste. Then decided to lollop over near them and eat some dry dune grass- that wasn’t to his taste either.

He sits in the the dunes near Iris and nudges into the sand with his nose when little brown crabs scuttle over the seaweed. Startling him.

Iris produced her sketch board once again and captures him sat there snorting at the crustaceans as they scurry sidewards over the sand. She draws a dried up peach starfish, a mauve-plum scotch bonnet shell, spattered with beige and gold spots. She draws the blistered and slimy seaweed that flowered with gloopy green branches of blossoming life. The flowers of the ocean waves. Washed up knotted amongst stones and bleached pallid sticks of driftwood.

Kylo warns Erland if he gets his nose too close to those crabs he’ll get pinched. He could just see one of the little things dangling off his horses hairy nostril-

Erland pays little notice to his masters warning as one stubborn crab waves a violent snapping pincher the horse to threaten. Erland jerks the little thing to flip upside down in a spray of sand, legs exposed, with a nudge of his snout. Done playing with the fetid creature with its spiny legs and hard oval shape shell.

Iris wanders along on the sand as Kylo lays down next to his horse and shuts his eyes to feel the sun and wind kiss at his cheeks.

He’s so coldblooded it’s nice to sometimes relish the feeling of the sunbeams flooding warmth into the ice of his veins. All very well and good being a supposed creature of the shadows, but now and again, he relishes and aches for the feel of shutting his eyes and letting milky precious gold sunshine splash on his skin and flicker along his eyelids like gold dust.

She wanders along and collects battered shells and pretty rocks as a keepsake. She comes back with a handful of blue-silver shells, fragments and treasures of the deep in such rich colours. Chunks of mermaid jewels - otherwise known as glass - in brown and green. Sharp edges worn smooth by the tide.

She had collected some pebbles also, flat round stones so cold and smooth in her hands. Crunching on the gritty sand that snuck into her palm where she picked up her little trove of beach treasure. Plucked out the gritty beige sands for safekeeping. She draws some more shells and Kylo watches how prettily she focuses when her hair is set squirming and fussing all around her shoulders by the ruthless wind.

When she returns to the rug where her husband is lounging, he peels open one eye when he hears her unlace her boots. He’s wide awake now.

He sits up and gladly kneels at her feet and slithers his clever hands up her skirts to unlace her stockings and peel them down - she wanted to dip her toes in the cold ocean. He helpfully obliges in helping undress her legs.

He smirks like the devil when he shoves his hands up her skirts and feels onto thighs to help. Eyes smug and flirtatious as he works. Mumbles lowly how theres no one around for miles. Assessed if he could really pin her skirts to her hips and fuck her here, on the rug, in the sand tossed wind like a rutting animal.

Slipping her blue wool dress down just just just enough over her breasts, then sucking and feasting on the raspberry rose petal red of her nipples. Hard peaks getting harder in his mouth. Losing his cock deep inside her blistering hot cunt and thrusting her into the sand with her legs clinging to his hips whilst the gulls scream overhead. He very seriously considers it.

She hitched her skirts up to her calves and he takes her hand and walks with her to the shore - he doesn’t like the feeling of sand on his feet so he leaves his boots on. She holds his hand as she nudges her feet into the icy sting of water. Shivers and jumps when the water kisses cold at her toes. The wet grit and sharp shells and the searing cold of scottish sea water fizzes froths between her toes.

The tug and plunge of the waves pulling and retreating. She stains the bottom of her teal blue skirts dark navy with water. A large wave crashes in that she can’t escape quick enough. She yelps and holds her skirts up to get away.

He snatches her up into the air out of the reach of the water. Grabs her away and twirls her up into his arms as she laughs. Combs her fingers in his hair and kisses his lips. They trade kisses as he gets her to his chest. Lips speckled all salty from the sea air.

There’s a giant splash not far down the beach, and some dismayed whinnying, which indicated that Erland had gone to attack the resting seagulls - again.

Kylo grumbles into her kiss. Uncaring that the waves would soon lap and froth at his sturdy knees. He stays exactly where he’s stood. Hauling her close. Kissing her so passionately she thinks her bones are saccharine and fizzing with love like gold champagne and will likely go limp soon - wobbly, like calves foot jelly.

“Know anyone in the market for a strong handful fool of a horse?” He asks when he drags in a breath from their kiss.

Iris smiles and curls her fingers into the nape of those rakish curls. “Hush. He’s adorable.” She kisses the corner of his lush mouth to try and coax him into another kiss.

She’s always loved his lips. Right from the first sight of him. It made her sigh to think how petal soft those lips could be placing kisses on warm skin. Silken and lush.

Now these lips are all hers and she revels often in their sweet ripe softness. Like cherries and plums and every sweetly decadently good thing. Pink like berry wine and twice as soft as roses petals. Kylo had lips women would die to kiss. She’s not a senseless woman - yet she would gladly submit to every kiss, smile or laugh coming out of this gorgeous mouth.

She doesn’t care that men aren’t supposed to be gorgeous. They’re supposed to want to be handsome and rugged and brave. He is all those things, he’s virtually a Viking for Christ’s sake - and he still manages to be the prettiest man she’s ever witnessed.

She touches her fingers to the corner of the lush things in question. He watches her tenderly. Fingertips touching the plump of the dimple in the corner of his smile. She’s so in love she’s slipped into madness, she’s decided.

She can’t understand how anyone couldn’t love this man- her husband. She absolutely knew and understood why he appealed to both the sexes. As per his revelation yesterday. He was just beautiful to admire. Stunning, striking, unforgettable.

And she can’t even begin to confess how much she would have liked to see his gigantic set shoulders and thighs trussed up in viking gear. Leather jerkin and studs and armour plating. Brandishing his long sword or his axe. Hair long and braided with silver. Ink wolf pelt squaring his impressive shoulders. Hard gaze like granite, a scowl on his face.

She’s simply amazed at the fact he hadn’t enchanted and seduced ten hundred men. He could easily have done so.

Something about the thought of seeing his total savagery, his honour in battle completely undoes her. So much so, she had to kiss him again. Merely for that purpose. He’s taken aback with how ferocious her kiss is. It starts to rattle the cage of his inner animal. Tonight is also a full moon. His unholy temper is fired ready in preparation-

And then she kisses him like that- she may aswell have unleashed the beast and set it roaming free with blood scented in its nose.

He kisses her back just as hard. She feels his tongue sneak along her lips and brush along her own. That warm slither of fire and hot coals slides along her spine. Her toes curl and Kylo walks them further up the beach before they both get completely sodden in the fierce waves. Chances were they could kiss so long they’d never move. They could be six feet underwater and not know it.

He scoops her up and brings her back to shore. Wind ripping at them and the waves splashing and churning at their escape.

They get back to the wool square of their rug and Kylo kisses her hands as she dries off her gritty sand stained feet.

He tells her if her pinkened raw hands get any colder she’ll soon be a corpse like him. They pack up, and the howling wind and approaching dark clouds herald their retreat.

Kylo saw it as perfectly tactical advance. They can break their journey and fast somewhere on the way back. A little fishing village pub or a country hamlet they might come across.

They gather their things- her coat pockets skittle and are now lumpy and heavy with all the rocks and seashells and things she’s collected and drawn. They pick over the sand dunes and grasses and get away from the open cover of the coast and the weather that batters them.

They take to the little country roads again. Huddled together and keeping warm. His arm slung fully around her hip. Erland’s slow trots lull her into a sleepy rocking rhythm.

Before long they come back into the familiar sight of Kinlochleven. The village near their Inn. They deposit Erland at the mews and wander along the quiet street. The rambling shops all dark and higgledy where they sit on the pavement.

She’s heard and read about Edinburgh and the dark slim gothic of the tumbled buildings there; this place looks oddly similar. Nestled not far off the banks of Loch Leven. This brought fishing trades and sailors into the little village to liven things up. Horse-pulled carts and traps jolt and lumber along the muddy street sandwiched between tall brick grey buildings. Shops of all variety’s lay open for business below.

They stop and admire the big barrel windows jutting out into the pavement. One shop full of sketches of the loch. Oil paintings and charcoal vistas of beautiful Scottish countryside. The next shop is a dressmakers and then a haberdashers.

Iris ducks into a confectioners. Air sugared with sweet snap of apples and toffee sugar. She comes out with a bag of soor plooms, and granny sookers - the kind lady proprietor explained to her the old Scots tale behind the names of sour plums and granny suckers. She also buys a bag of dried raspberries. Give a couple to Erland when they see him again.

She pops the boiled sweet in her mouth as they walk arm in arm along the dirty pavements strewn with dusty mud. They amble down a little shambles brick alley, past antique shops and barbers and they squeeze into a very small cosy bookshop and spend the best part of an hour browsing. Companionable silence as Iris brings Kylo a book on viking history for him to glance through. 

She had so many questions perched on her tongue about his childhood. Sprung from nordic soil. Far off, over misty mountains, in snowy lands and forests packed close and inundated with pine trees.

They eventually quit the bookshop. With a paper wrapped pile of history books that Iris is dying to read - Kylo recommended some good titles.

They ramble hopefully in the direction of lunch. Many pubs to take their pick from- Kylo adores that his wife had absolutely no qualms about venturing into such places. She wasn’t picky about devouring all manners of life. She can look outside her own class and not feel ashamed or boxed in by it.

They settle on a quaint low little cottage up by the Lochs edge. An ale house. The Selkies Heid. A painted midnight sign swings above the door. It depicted a flowing golden haired maiden with curling hair spreading out, stepping out a seal skin, with the name standing proud above.

The pub overlooks a great portion of the Loch. Boats bob and dip in the grey sticky blue ink of the waters. Damp grey sky and clouds drizzling downwards. Bleeding into the foggy surface. The lake always mirroring the mood of the sky directly above. Today it looks dour. Gulls shriek and the stale wind drifts off the surface and the stagnant lapping tides.

They duck into the cosy pub and immediately their surroundings hug them snug. Wood fired and heavy with the tang or soot and pipe smoke. The dim place is packed with grizzled sailors and locals. Big burly men take up one corner of the narrow dark bar. Crowded around the fire. Whiskey drams in hand. A band is playing with a pipe and a fiddle. Sharp notes ringing out the jaunty jigging tune of a gaelic shanty.

The floor is a cold flagstone and the furnishings within is all dark wood and would have been well worn in the last century. Sparse chunky oak tables and benches. Candles bleed and hemorrhage dribbling white wax on every table top. Nervous red gold flames flicker smoke up in the clouded air.

The mould-mustard walls are pasted with sailing and nautical paraphernalia. Drawings of ships and old parchment registers and illustrations of crews and many many oceans and lochs. Boat oars hang low from all over the ceiling. Slotted on gold hooks.

Kylo clunks his head on one. Growls in slight irritation. Rubs the sore spot at the crown of his head. Touched Iris to the low of her back and gestures to an unclaimed table by the window. Where they can gaze over over the inky thick water and see the chunky chowder of the sky.

She smiles and sidles over to their free table. He watches her go. And she’s no lady muck. She says hello to the people sat around the tables near them. Pats a particularly ancient looking mongrel sat at an old man’s feet. He was an old sailor by the looks of things. Wearing a battered old long coat and a moth eaten old sailor flat cap.

The dogs tongue is lolling out it’s mouth as the shaggy beast comes forwards with its tail thumping in lazy excitement. She talks to the old man who was slumped over his tankard with a hunchback and a bushy snowy beard. Asks him the dogs name- coos it at the dog after he’s given it. The mutt was as grizzled and aged as its owner. Its tail wags faster when she does. She scritches under its grey salt and pepper chin and it shuts its eyes in bliss.

She sets down at their table and admires the loch through the small slanted crossed windows. She knows he must be annoyed from hitting his head; Because when the barman comes to him he smiles slyly and asks for two glasses of whiskey. They are poured quick and he brings them back to the table.

The sailors start on another tune about Spanish ladies, and Kylo brings the glasses to their table. Wincing at the sheer volume of the fiddle and raucous singing.

He slides opposite her and clunks their glasses together in a toast. “Slàinte.” Iris perks sunnily when their glass tankards meet in a hollow clink. Kylo’s heard that particular gaelic slip off many a man’s tongue in his years travelling this earth. He repeats it. She tells him the old man told her how to cheer in gaelic.

Their conversation is halted by the many jeers and claps of the gang of sailor lads finishing their song. Iris laughs at their gaiety. Kylo sips his drink and winces when their shouts shake the ceiling. “Perhaps I should have chosen somewhere quieter in town.” He supposed.

“I don’t mind at all.” Iris beams. “In fact I quite like the liveliness of it.” She smiles. Tentatively sipping her whiskey. It was bittersweet fire trailing down her throat.

She coughs a little with the first sip but it starts a pleasing fire to flare up in her belly. His eyes slice dark and amused at her as he sips his own glass. She quickly emptied her glass. A shaft of cloudy sunshine twirling with dust mites frames them at the window table.

A plump barmaid in a scarlet-wine wool dress brings Iris some a bowl of something hearty and warm. A pallid cream broth smelling of smoked fish and buttery leeks. There’s a platter of enough chunks of bread to feed the entire navy. When she leaves them alone, Iris swirls her bouillon spoon into the chowder and soon finds its swimming with chunks of smoked haddock, green leeks and squares of golden potatoes.

Kylo explains to her that particular soup is called Cullen skink. A dish traditionally found in the Moray coast, in northeastern Scotland. It’s like it’s colonial cousin -New England clam chowder. Kylo’s has tried it once on his travels in colder climes. Mostly in his days it was fish roasted over fires with clay oven baked loaves. He’s not used to sophisticated food. Iris quite agrees, fancy french cuisines were all the rage - spun sugar and frou frou opulence and rich luxury delights.

They have another round of whiskey and then two roasted grouse come out on a giant platter for them both. Merely basted in butter and lemon juice, seasoned with salt and pepper. Simple but very well cooked. They saw off wings and legs and eat them whilst listening to the sailors fiddle chirp over the din of drunken men.

The pub smells of whiskey spice, old ale and oak, mugwort pipe tobacco, and the soot choking from the fires and clogged chinneys. It’s cosy and delightful.

When they have another small dram of whiskey each, the grizzled old man with the dog from the next table pipes up, taking a break ironically enough from smoking the curved walnut horn of his fisherman’s pipe - to challenge Kylo to a Scottish drinking game.

He’d seen him drink three drams and wanted to know if the Sassenach lord could keep pace with a scotsman. A Scottish sailor at that too-

Kylo’s drunk with sailors and warriors and people from ancient lands aplenty in his time. He’s not above drinking with his fellow man. No matter creed or religion or race. He’s sat at many a fireside and heard tales and woes and songs sung drunkenly of many a humans homeland.

Iris smiles cunningly at the old man and Kylo beams a grin full well knowing he could drink this entire pub under the table all night long. He accepts the challenge.

A nobbled and scarred old hand lunges forwards to shake Kylos. Tanned and weathered skin all shrivelled and pocked with faded inky tattoos on his hands and arms. Letters bleed into his old knuckles. He’s smiling behind the bushy white of his beard and kylo rolls his sleeves and they get to drinking.

One glass turned to two, then three. By the forth half the pub is crowded around to watch. Five and sixth and the man begins to sway a little on his seat. With a great roar the seventh and eighth glasses finishes off the bottle. The old timer takes one meagre sip of his ninth glass, before he completely wobbles and shakes his head.

The fellow sailors and scots in the pub come up and clap Kylo heartily on the back and shoulders in jovial camaraderie. Telling the old man in a friendly manner that maybe he’ll do better next time and not pick on such a big lad to out-drink. Kylo rises to stand and he doesn’t even wobble.

Slumping back into his seat. The old codger rises very unsteadily to take Kylo’s hand in congratulations.

“Lachlan Murray. From Fife.” He tells them in introduction. He’s sailed the world more times than the sun has set and risen. He tells them he was born by the sea and he intends to die on it, and be lost to Davy Jones’ locker.

“Ye tell me your name, lad.” He demands. Narrowing a grizzled eye. Pointing his pipe at his champion. Stabbing the pipe into Kylo’s mighty chest in urging.

“Lord Kylo Ren of Bavaria.” Kylo offers. Shaking his frail old hand. “Lachlan Murray of Fife. You drink like a Viking warrior.” He smirks in assurance at the man. Nodding in respect to the elderly tattooed whiskey husk.

Lachlan laughs a cackle. Awards his toothless smile to them both. He nods across to Iris. “This be your wife, lad?”

Kylo smiles. “Yes she is.”

Lachlan laughs cunningly. “Aye she’s bonny. Ye lucky big bastard.” He sways, still leering, and thumps his auld bones back into his seat. His dog nudges at his knee. Lachlan pats him as he talks to the newly wedded couple.

“We were wed not two days ago.” Kylo explains. Smiling warmly back at his wife. His eyes melt like crushed charcoal and honey.

“I hope ye threw her over her shoulder like a sack of oats and took her to bed, mi’lord. A bonny lass like that deserves a proper auld highland ruckus of a wedding night.” Lachlan raises a toast to the newlyweds and the whole pub chimes in. Roaring a toast to them. Iris’s cheeks go very pink. She laughs into her own whiskey glass.

“Aye she’s certainly bonny.” Kylo agrees with a clever smirk.

Now lunch and their drinking contest has finished they seize their coats and goods. Kylo settles the bill, and buys Lachlan another drink before they depart- the weathered old sailor chuckles as they go out.

The singing troupe starts a song about a bonny english lass. Lachlan thumps his feet and wails intoxicatingly along to the song and Lord and Lady Ren smile to each other as they leave the pub. Long may the singing and drinking and Scottish revelry continue on into the night.

They get back to Erland. He snuffles into Iris’s palm when she offers him the handful of dried raspberries she purchased earlier. As a treat for bearing them parting from him for an hour or two. She strokes his nose and up the flat bone between his eyes and he nudged her with brusque affection with no sense of how strong he is. Nearly knocked her over.

They mount Erland once more and make for the Inn. A mere few minutes away. Over dirty roads and under cloudy skies. The sun manages to peep through the clouds briefly. Iris smiles and feels it warm the top of her head.

Kylo likes how it turns her hair to spun bronze and gold. He nestled a kiss to the top of her head. Smells the warmth and her soap and the salt from the sea this morning. She leans back into him and shuts her eyes for a moment. He does the same. Rests his cheek on her head. Cushions it there as Erland carries on straight on the road

They turn into the Inn and deposit their big seagull chaser into the stable hands care. They gather their things and head up their private staircase to their room.

Iris notes how her bones feel heavy. Must’ve been the whiskey. They feel knotted together tight like too many bows tugging on a rope.

She smothers a yawn as Kylo opens the door for her. She walks across to the little table by the window. Unloads her coat pocket contents onto the walnut table. Pebbles, shells, some dried seaweed that she adored the colour of. The deepest black-green. The frail curls and slithers of broken shells shine on the fractured dim light like diamonds. The fine free jewels of the Scottish shore.

She sits on the edge of the bed after shedding her coats and boots. Specs of sand sprinkle off her boots across the floor. Uncaring she flops back on the bed and curls up into the fur pelt. Tucking her knees up and drawing into a cosy little shape. Kylo crouches and tends to the waning fire opposite. Marble white skin of his glimmers beautiful red-saffron in the light. She always thinks so.

When he stands and turns back. Her eyes have swelled shut. He smiles. “Maybe I shouldn’t have fed my wife such strong whiskey?”

“I liked it.” She smiles. Keeping her eyes shut as she smothers another yawn back. He sits by her on the bed and strokes a hand through her hair. Palming along the shape of her skull. Softly taking the pad of his thumb to follow the delicate bow of her jawline.

“Besides you had atleast a bottle.” She counters. Her eyes are hooded, peeking over. Dazzling him with silver grey in their half bright bedroom.

“I’m dead and a Viking my love. Drink doesn’t tend to touch me as easily.” He tells.

“What cheek.” She comments with a smile. Snug and cosy on the bed. Grateful to curl into the furs for regaining her warmth that the cold winds stole.

“You know most wives would rightly admonish their husbands for drinking as such.” He tells her. Very amused. Mirth softly sewn into his smile. Amusement lighting his eyes a brandy-russet.

“I’m not most wives. Lord Ren.” She promises. Seeings as she’s the one slumbering in an alcohol induced stupor. She can’t rightly shrill at him like a coarse nagging fishwife for his taking spirits.

He smirks wider. “Indeed you are not. My Lady.” He’s pretty certain splendid wives like this one don’t abound this earth frequently.

He kisses her brow. “Get some rest. I’ll wake you for supper.” He instructs quietly.

He sits back and she mumbles something sleepy he cannot make out. Could’ve been a breath, or may have been a soft whine or some cluster of half whispered words.

He strokes a cold curled knuckle over the cushion of her warm cheek. “Sleep my love.” He hushes. Lulling her.

Swallowed up into the blankets and pelts on the bed. He pulls the rug over her shoulders. Cups her upper arm before striding across to take a chair by the fire.

He pauses at the window. Dusk is just shimmering across the horizon. Mountains backlit with violet and frothy pallid pink. The faintest touch - the sky brushed with streaks of watery colour before the heavy oil velvet paint of night closes in. The white seers eye of the full moon is faded but the ringing in his blood tells him its there without him having to look.

The knowledge of what tonight is had been simmering at his blood all day. Bubbling and sloshing beneath the surface of his stony skin. The vile beast in the pit of his being growls and snaps it jaw at its confinement. Tears tooth and claw at his ribs. Tonight is the night it knows it can be freed.

Before he was turned, he had a vague naive sense that his kind, his kin, were a basic and savage peoples. They’d conquered and raped and pillaged. He’d almost describe them as animalistic.

_Oh,_ but Vikings were nothing compared to the basest brutality of vampires.

When he was first turned there was nothing like the hunger he felt when he woke. His bones doused in searing vinegar and acid. Every nerve stabbed with a red hot flame. Shrieking in so much pain that he wanted to shake, sob, to howl. To beg for his end to come because then the agony would leave. The pain and hunger drove him feral, mad. A fever set in his bones and he wanted to claw out every last shred.

Matter of fact he can recall wanting to personally unpick his bones from out his own body if it would help.

Only one thing would heal him. One thing; to feed.

He wanted to slash at the walls with his bare hands and dash the dirt beneath his sharp fingernails - like it would help. He wants to be reminded and rooted into the earth, to remember his humanity, so that he doesn’t slaughter an entire village as easily as if he were changing for a warmer coat. The way the demon wound around his bones was just itching for. For massacre. Cackling at him to sate that hunger. To feed feed feed.

Kill, kill and _kill_.

To hear the screams, to drink in the fear and glut on it. The weakness of humans as he’d drain their strength, their fight, and their useless quick lives from them.

His inner beast is cruel. Merciless. Its savage and it’s recreating him it it’s perfectly horrible image. He wants to hear the slush of bones and meat and tissue snapping and cracking as he pulls limbs from torsos. He wants to feel the hot slide of blood cascading down his bare chest. He wants that spray of crimson spurting across his dry mouth to moisten his tongue with. Dripping off his fangs as his eyes churn fierce with gold - like coins melting in the smithys flames.

When he was first turned, every scent slid right into the fury of his rotten blood. He could taste things and hear things like never before. Raw things. Foul things. New dark pleasures dance, prod, and taunt him. Displayed out for sacrifice on the sordid altar of his hunger.

He was a creature. Not a man anymore he was a monster. A beast. He should have been crawling on all fours and his belly like the animals do.

Much time passed him by in woods blacker and deeper than his lost soul, where he’d hunt and terrify and rage among the trees and below the disgusted eye of the clever moon.

He’d wake up cradling some torn apart carcass. Snow dusted on the blood and the dirty bones. He’d come too in the icy morning, dripping in some other beasts ichor with his stomach wedged full of protein and raw dead meat.

Clothes torn. Hands bleeding. Mouth stuck with black rusty blood and all around him scattered a macabre collection of bones and fur and viscera.

He looked upon mortals he’d once known as his brothers, his friends, his clan. He looked upon them and he only saw the thumping veins waiting to be torn into by hungry teeth.

He thought humans were a greedy cruel race. He truly had no idea. A vampires hunger for power was insatiable. He’s done things and horrors he never could have had nightmares about in his human life.

He’s gorged on people and heard their loved ones screams rip at his ears. He’d fed until there was nothing but sickening thick silence that hummed at his ears. He’ll never forget that kind of silence.

Entire villages stood empty because of him. Massacre was his trail and carnage and blood followed him in a swathe, running in rivers under his feet. Murderer. Monster. Devil.

Sometimes the demon got a hold of him so badly, that he’d left none alive. And there’d been a hundred men or more around him when he’d started. By the time that first drop of blood hits his tongue, he’s lost to wicked dark things no man could fight or overpower.

He’d laughed bitterly at men who brandished crucifixes at him. The holy symbol many thought would deter such a devil as he. No such luck. Once upon a time, in one of those nameless little towns, spat in the snowy middle of nowhere. He’d fed and rampaged until he came to the boxy chapel. The priest had brandished the silver cross at him at the chapel doors.

The night sky behind kylo was snow and soot and flames. The trees alive with orange fire. The now dead men of the village had lit torches and set the woods afire to drive out the beast. It didn’t save them.

Kylo appeared at those arched chapel doors. Blocked out the ochre light with his big body. Drenched in blood of innocent men, women and children. His scarlet smeared leather boots stopped just shy of the threshold.

Flames behind him were mirrored in his dead eyes. Those doomed mouths of the people he’d torn to pieces had cried and screamed about how the devil was here. And really, they weren’t wrong.

He gave off the meagre illusion that holy places were repulsive to him- as they rightfully were. But he wanted to bolster some fragile hope in the fun to laugh at it, to sneer at it when he tears it away out this man’s hands seconds later. He wants to pretend for a brief second that he can’t come inside this place of worship.

The priest barked at the demon to stay back.

Kylo smiles all slithery and savage. Knives of his fangs glimmer sticky ivory red in the night. Wet pearl daggers. Eyes searing gold. Drunk on power and blood and the sheer amount of warm sanguine life racing through his well fed veins. He ran his tongue carnally over his suddenly dry lips. Still caked in congealing blood. The very fibres of his brute body twisting with bliss.

The priest bade him to come no further. Shrinking back to the altar. Shoving the cross in his direction. Stammering about the blood Christ had spilled and how it was the life of god.

How Kylo had laughed at him. Swaggered in the chapel doors like he hadn’t a rush or a care in the world.

Told the cowering priest that the only thing that scared him about that cross, was the fact that fetid symbol was the most blood soaked relic of any religion. More so than him as he stood there with crimson running off his soaked hair and chin in rivulets.

How many infants heads had been smashed because of that cross? How many men and women have been cleaved and massacred and stoned? and how many countries of men had been told to slaughter their neighbours like cattle.

As long as there has ever been a true god to kneel in front of, there has been true killing in its name.

He’s holding the most bloodied symbol up to one of this worlds most bloodied monsters. There’s no shame to be had here.

He watched the hope and faith shrink in that priests eyes as he stormed into the chapel with his teeth bared, claws of his nails dagger sharp. Kylo shed blood on the cross that night and it had nothing to do with Christ or god.

If he could go back and undo every horror, he’d do so gladly. Back then he was a new vampire testing the sickening limits of his immense power and his boundless hunger.

He left that repulsive persona behind many millennia ago.

He grew up and out from the villainy of loving the slaughter. What’s worse, is that he eventually became immune to the fun of it. It didn’t thrill anymore. The screams the gore. The fact he could walk into a town and kill everyone in it, in an hour. It grew stale.

He’d lost sight of being human. He’d only listened to the beast within. He soon built that awful creature a cage. He got it cornered. Sobered up. He took hold of his life by the scruff of the neck, and turned it around. Reminding himself there was nothing to gain from mindless killing.

He thinks on all of this at the sight of the full moon. That disc of pearl has been witness to many horrors committed by him. Under forests, under freezing mountains and blizzards and sunny dusty cities full of sand- it’s seen every one of his savage soaked moments.

Vampires are animals. The most basic form of carnal predators, and they go out to hunt when the moon is full and their blood is fired up savage from it. Kicked into a storm. No different to wolves, or lions or any blood seeking beast long and sharp of tooth and claw.

That moon will rise full tonight. And he had some explaining to do to his dear sweet nubile wife when she wakes, about all that moon entailed for him. For now he retires to the fireside with the book on Viking lore she had picked out.

Listens to the soft of her breathing entwined with the delicious lull of her strumming pulse. The wind shatters on the glass outside along with the rustle of the big acorn tree. He watches as the light of day gets strangled slowly and more and more deep purples and blues swallow up the Scottish scenery.

Soon, their room is dim. Lit only by candles. The tentative chamber maid came in to light them but Kylo catches her at the door and whispers he’d do it instead so Iris won’t get woken up. He lights the candles on the holders on their bedside and on the walls. Silently moving, quieter than a shadow, around their room. Before long a pleasing haze of gold candlelight fights off the heavy velvet darkness that sought to invade their room.

Iris likes how darkness doesn’t seem so scary anymore. As a child she’d been overtly cautious of things that lurk under the bed and monsters that invade her dreams. In finding out that some of those things are actually very real, in finding out what he is. Somehow now she wasn’t scared. She knows Kylo is there in that darkness. He’s scarier and stronger than anything that could lurk in the shadows.

The shadows in her life contain him now. And that thought comforts her.

She can hear him moving about. Faint whine of floorboards buckling and creaking gently under his careful treads. For such a big lumbering hulk of man, he couldn’t half move silently when he needed too. Her eyes flutter open to a dark room lit with gently casting candles.

Shadows flicker and dance up the walls and the fire glows proudly. Night looks cold and dark pressing against the chilly windowpanes. She’s awfully glad to be wrapped up snug and safe in here, with him.

She sits up and the rustling of the bedclothes notify him that she’s awake once more. He steps through from the adjoining dining room. Finished with the fire in there. And their excellent host had just sent up the first and second course of supper for them. He fills the low doorway and smiles.

He’s dressed down. Ditched his cravat and coat. Now only in his shirt, waistcoat, breeches and boots. All black as usual. Save for the soft crinkled linen shirt. His sleeves are rolled up his forearms and he smiles as he fills the doorway.

She could be mistaken and it could be the candlelight tricking her dazed eyes. But they look more gold tonight. As clear as beige sherry in a fine crystal glass. Blown wide and dark. Black and gold.

“You’re awake. Suppers ready when you are, dove.” He tells her. He’s pleased to see her again and she likes that thought.

The crooning scent of rich home cooked food propels her to sit up. Hooking her cleverly right into that dining room. She can smell buttered leeks and some sort of meat pie that she’s suddenly mouth watering and belly starved for. She’s eaten a whole roast grouse to herself today and still she’s got room to be gluttonous. She puts that down to the clawing hot passion they share before bed. She goes to bed sated and wakes up ravenous.

“Smells delicious.” She tells as she sits up in the bed. Stretching out her back and her cheeks all rosy from sleep. He swoops down and kisses each one. Tastes the rush of blood and he’s absolutely no shame in admitting to himself how hard he gets in scenting it.

_You smell delicious_ he wants to say.

He instead does something fair more comely and chivalrous. He takes her hand and helps her up and through to dinner. She attempts to right her rumpled dress and comb her hair with her fingers into a pleasing arrangement.

“No fussing. You always look lovely.” He smiles. Dropping a kiss down on her neck when she tries assembling her hair into a chignon with her ribbon and a silver clip. She smiles.

“It looks like an unruly birds nest.” She blushes. Referring to the coiled tumble of her muddy hair.

He tilts his head and surveys her tresses. Brings one fingertip up and skims his touch to follow the path of one curl of hair near her ear. Tracing its shape like he’s adoring a work of art by a masterful hand.

“I like it.” He admits calmly and confidently.

“I’ve hair colour of mud. Or twigs. The most boring colour of hair there is.” She insists.

“I don’t think so...” He offers. Stroking one coil of it back behind her ear so he could lean over and kiss the skin there. Let his breath fan her ear.

“Makes me think of roast chestnuts and autumn. And you haven’t seen its beauty when the sun shines though it. Like honey in a jar. And there’s undertones of red in here too. Little flickers of auburn when they light hits it just so.” He says. Moving his fingers over her hair. He speaks like he’s studied her.

“A whole bursting bonfire of colours. Golden browns and reds. Like leaves in autumn. Russet embers. And autumn is my favourite colour.” He adds cleverly. Whiskey, tree bark in the blazing evening sun, golden dry leaves, the first fall of rain darkening the once summery soil. Warmly rich.

He kisses her ear again. “I like it very much.” He whispers onto the nape of her neck. “Quite my favourite head of hair.” He insists. Pressing a kiss to the wavy crown of it.

“It’s just always seemed dull to me.” She says with pinkened cheeks as they pass through the doorway and come to the table. People have always seen fit to remind Iris how un-extraordinary her hair colour and eyes were. Grey clouds for eyes and mud for hair. What was remarkable about that? She’d heard those whispers flourish from society ladies mouths back home.

Set for two and fresh new wildflowers or dried flowers in the vase every night next to the candles on the shimmering mahogany table. Tonight is purple heather and red roses. Their scent stains the air sweetly. Iris sits into her seat and folds her napkin before her.

“Well, Wives must strictly adhere to their husbands when they are flattering them. And you cannot disagree with me.” He tells her jokingly.

“Blind belief and obedience at every turn?” She asks.

“Much more like it.” He simpers as he pours out the wine from the carafe. She butters the warm rolls on her plate. He settled back in his chair and sips the red wine. She opens the round soup terrine and a curl of steam scented of vegetables meat and stock meets her nose. Scotch broth is her dish tonight.

And awaiting their next course is a large flat terrine dish covered over. Iris wonders what’s inside that smells so divine and after her soul dish is cleared away. They find out. However the fish knifes on their settings was somewhat a giveaway. There’s a whole side of smoked loch salmon for them. Sliced lemons layered on top. With boiled and buttered mint potatoes tumbled alongside the fillet of fish. Served with peas and sliced green cabbage.

It was poached in white white and there’s a creamy sauce to drizzle over it. Iris thinks it may be the best fish she’s ever eaten. Scotland was known for its wild salmon and now she sees why. Even Kylo tries a little. He grew up on a diet of fish after all. His little village as a boy was known for its salted cod and eels. But this is far more succulently cooked than rubbing it with salt and cooking it over an open campfire.

She’s eaten a second helping and nibbled at a third and by the time she’s through with the rich dish she’s entirely full. She has some light Rhenish wine to finish. And kylo speaks up after they push their plates aside.

“My love. There’s something I think we need to discuss-“ He begins. He has her full attention and she listens keenly.

He can feel the ebbing darkness and energy surging in his veins. Rolling through his body. His hunger is ripe and he’s almost glad there’s a heavy table socketed between them. She sees his eyes are almost fully churning gold now. More piercing than polished gold.

He shifts under the strain of a force she can’t see. She doesn’t know he’s being tugged into the throes of something dark and ravening. Something ancient from deep inside. He’s been dragged into it since the suns been setting. With each flush of gathering darkness he feels it’s influence flush out the man and bring forth the animal.

She opens her mouth to ask about his sudden shift in demeanour and he stops her by explaining. He seems different tonight. Quieter. Less open.

“You may not be aware, but it’s a full moon out tonight.”

He had her attention before - now he has every single scrap of it in her body. He’s reeled her in and captured every spec. She blinks and tries to understand. He can almost hear her blinking. Focuses on her big grey eyes and how she’s waiting for more-

“The full moon has long been associated with supernatural things. Increased behavior. This applies to the oceans tides, humans, animals-“ he draws off. “Vampires.” He explains.

“Matter of fact, vampires hungers are closely correlated with the effects of the full moon. Much like animals are. They hunt when the moon is full.” He says.

“As do I.” He says seriously. Bringing his eyes up from the table to hers. There is nothing but discs of gold out his dark eyes now.

“I did wonder about...” She swallows. Meekly smiling.

This seems to amuse him. “I thought you might.”

He knows she’s not senseless. Naturally her seeking curious mind would grope for answers when confronted with the strange new beast she’d married.

“Tonight it’s best for everyone, if I go out for an hour and two and -feed.” He explains. “We take the boat from the port in two days time and I will need to have my appetites sated by then.” He tells her.

She nods. “I understand.” Even though some tiny reckless part of her heart wants to know how beast like he can get. She’s inquisitive as to the limits of his animalistic temper- and she doesn’t want to be ignorant about his condition.

He reaches across the table for her hands. The dear sweet hands that he’ll never see any harm come too. “You bear my condition like no other woman would have.”

She smiles briefly. “I can’t deny there are many, _many_ , questions flitting about in my head as of now.” She starts.

“Iris my love, on this night, under that moon, it’s safer if I am removed from the things I hold dear. Because my temper will shift and I cannot guarantee your safety if you are around me at such a time.” He warns.

She’s breathless. And still a foolish corner of her heart wants to study this aforementioned temper.

“Dark things. Little dove. Tonight I am not myself. I am not kind. Or patient. Or honourable. There are acts I must commit that are distasteful. And I will shield you from the horrors of them. You’ve seen what can happen-“

How could she even forget. The lately lamented Lord Eversleigh. Gossip was rife for weeks after his death. Hushes of tales flourish and speculate. His body was discovered a day after the show, in the gutter outside a well known festering rat hole of an illegal opiate den and gambling club. He’d been ransacked for his wallet and had his throat torn open for the coin in his pockets. He used to be known to gamble at the club and some footpad must’ve followed him out with his winnings and robbed him of his money, and then of his life.

Eversleigh had plenty of enemies in such quarters. Throw a stone in any street thereabouts in the slums of town, and it would hit someone to whom he owed a vast debt. With his lowlife taste in fast women- Several disgruntled bawdy house masters were owed money from the man. They could been the ones to cut his throat and have his wallet for what they were promised and cheated of.

Kylo sometimes thought people were too naive. It served to better him so he can’t fault such innocence. Human beings are hopeful creatures. He doesn’t blame them for growing toward an easier answer rather than indulge in seeking for the darker viler truth. Whatever meant that they could sleep safer in their cosy little beds at night. Keep the preying demons in their dreams at bay.

His warning makes her blood run a little colder. She’s so inspired and taken in by the handsome lover she’s forgotten the hidden side of him is pure visceral animal.

She nods. Again. There seemed little else to do. “Will you be gone all night?” She asks.

Heart drowning a little in crushing sadness that she’ll be in her bed alone. The bed she can now only associate with sleeping in when they’re all tangled up in a pile of sheets and sweat after rigorous glorious lovemaking.

“Most of it I should think.” He offers. His soft thumb pad strokes her knuckles. “And I want you to lock the door behind me. I have my keys. But I will not be easy until I know you’re safely kept in here.” He promises.

She smiles in agreement. Even if his mind was half gone with thirsting for blood. He’d still remember to the gallant Lord taking care of his Lady.

“I’m going to go and get ready for bed.” She says. Standing from the table. He peers up at her.

His gold eyes watch her carefully. “Are you displeased with me?” He checks. His nature was not always palatable to humans. He sometimes forgot that.

She steps forwards and touches his wrist. Gently holds it. Soothes him with her touch. His skin bristles at her contact and he tries not to grit his teeth. The heat of her skin made the demons writhe and crouch, hackles rising, ready to pounce. He flickers his eyes briefly across her neck. So close. So delicious-

“I could never be displeased with you. Not for one moment. I’m only being a foolish heartsick wife, dismayed with the thought of your leaving my company tonight.” She smiles.

“But I _know_ you. And I know you would act in the best and most honourable of decisions for everyone’s safety.” She adds.

He smiles. One corner of his mouth tugs up. “I’ll wait for you to finish readying yourself before I go.” He explains.

They part after her pressing a single gently sweet kiss to his lips. He bites his tongue so he doesn’t growl and haul her on this tabletop before them.

It had its merits of course- the idea. Sweeping aside the dinner service with an arc of his arm. Pushing her down tearing off her clothes and rutting and biting her tender lily skin to bruise as he claims her over and over as his mate. Fucks his seed into her until she can’t take another load - or thrust.

He swallows that burning blistering black need down his throat. Acetous bile that clawed at his insides. He watches the pale back of her neck as she leaves the room bound for the anteroom. She undressed quickly and washed her face with the warm water in the jug and the little cake of lavender studded honey soap left out for her.

She’s glad for the free relief of her nightgown. The one with the drawstring neck and lace on the sleeves. She leaves her clothes folded on the side to deal with in the morning. She’s ready for bed but she’s never been so oddly awake. Somehow energised by Kylo’s news.

When she comes out the bathroom. He’s stood pulling on his coat and gloves. Fire spinning a clever reel of gold and amber through his eyes when he turns to her. It almost undoes her- the gaze of those harrowing eyes. She finds them more beautiful than perhaps she should.

She almost undoes him too. Those nightgowns. If only she knew what those nightgowns did to him when he wasn’t perched on the edge of ferocity.

A gauzy thin sheet of linen encasing her naked body. No stays or chemises. No stockings. He can almost taste the sound of that thin linen scraping and rustling against her naked skin. It makes his mouth water. To say nothing for the way her nipples are now standing perky. Or the fact he can absolutely make out the gorgeous triangle thatch of curls on her soft sweet mons- that fits into the cup if his palm perfectly.

He knows if he stormed over there right now he could sink both brute hands to her plump bottom and get both cheeks to grab in a handful. Squeeze that delightful ass and get her to that bed for some of the most debauched fucking she’s not ready to receive just yet.

He swallows and watches as he climbs onto the bed and nestles herself into the bed. Folding the covers around her legs and sitting up against the headboard.

Ignoring the aching pit of hunger stirring in his stomach, he crosses to her and towers over the bed like a big wall of an approaching storm. Clouds and thunder and churning skies. Energy and starvation beats off him like sweat. He radiates unrest. Crackles out his pores like static lightning. She tastes it in the kiss he presses to his cheek that would usually have been on her lips.

“Don’t wait up for me dove. I could be quite some time.” He tells her. Cupping her face. She tilts her head up and holds his hand. Drinking in the gold of his eyes like fine champagne. Even in his barbarity he was beautiful.

“Be careful.” She can’t help but cry out in a hush when he pulls away.

He smirks kindly. Stroking her cheek. The most bloodthirsty vampire history has ever recorded and she’s telling him to keep safe.

“I will always seek to do as my darling wife commands of me.” He smiles.

Without a flourish he walks to the door and those eyes glow piercing as he steps out into the gloom of the dark hallway beyond. Haunting in all the best ways. He blends to the shadows and then he’s gone. Off to feast. She locks the door after him as per his request. That, she would obey too.

Iris absentmindedly hopes he doesn’t catch the poor chambermaid scurrying up the stairs to come to bed. She’d faint seeing him in that state. Luckily she hears nothing. Nothing but the roar of the fire and the rustle of the bedsheets where she moves her feet.

She can’t help be curious. Knowing she won’t see much. He likely changed forms to cross the glens and countryside. She gets out of bed and pads over to the window alcove. Kneeling across it. She peels back the curtain and peers out.

Nothing awaits her on the other side of that curtain, but the velvet blue night sky. Sprinkled with stars. A everlasting drape of black blue velvet sprinkled with stars like ivory pearls of all sizes and shapes. Scattering the sky like the fine jewels they are.

She can’t see anything - she didn’t expect too. She knew Kylo was smart enough to not let himself be seen skulking around in the dark. He was a rather memorable character. He’d take precautions. She knows he might be that ambling hulking black wolf as he stalks to feed.

She slips back into bed. The feathers in the downy coverlet crumpled and crinkles. She folds it around her knees and listens to the fire roar and crackle. She reaches for her sketching board and brings it around. Smiles an amused laugh to herself at the picture she’d drawn of Erland earlier. Him being irked by the little brown crab on the grassy sand dunes.

She looks over the sketches she’s done. Little scribbles of things and flowers she’s collected. A thistle. Erland’s disgruntled face. A sketch of Kylo stretched out on the rug. She’s drawn him in profile and then again as he stretched out beside her today. With his eyes closed. A soft smile painted on his lips. The dark of his hair. The shade of his lips and the cross hatching she did of his cheeks.

She strokes a thumb over her paper and charcoal incarnation of him. She decided right then and there, as her heart goes all mushy and wooed over a few strokes of pencil, that love really was a form of madness.

She’s going gooey over a drawing. And whilst that’s to be expected of an artisté, she’s not entirely sure it’s all that level headed to be moved into a fit of the weakening vapours via a drawing of her husbands nose and cheeks.

She left his eyes blank. Just drew their shape. Sometimes their colour was impossible to determine. In the sun today they were so enchanting she couldn’t even focus. And then he’d layed down and shut his eyes. The fan of his lashes kissing his cheeks. She’d watched him resting. Her heart hammering wild with love all the while.

She sketches until she feels drowsy. The still watchful night drawing evermore in.

She rubs her eyes and sleepily stumbles out the warm bed and puts out the candles around the room til only the dull glow of the fire remains. She stokes the crumbling hot embers and watches the white ash crush underneath. She loads on two more sawn logs and watches the flames curl to embrace them.

She straightens and regards the shadowed face of the clock. It read a quarter to one. She pads back to the bed and burrows deep into the covers. Curling on her front and sinking her arms under their pillows and smiling when she buries her nose in the cotton and catches the scent of Kylo’s mint oil and cologne soaked onto his pillow. The merest traces of him makes her happy.

She shuts her eyes and listens to the calmly cheering sound of a barn owl hooting in the tree outside their window. Nature at its gentlest. She’s always loved that sound.

She gets faint glimmers of her old home in hearing that owl. They used to sit in the elm trees at Westwell. Hoot away into the night. Echoes used to slither off the moon drenched glass as she lay in bed as a girl, listening out for that very call.

She opens her eyes and turns to look at the small window of the Inn. Across the room from the bed. She left the curtain peeled aside earlier. And now a slice of the full eye of the moon tries to peer in at her. Dousing the room, a pearly stripe leaking watery pale across the brown floorboards.

A rustle over the door takes her eyes back across. She nearly flies off the bed when a new pair of gold eyes are there staring back at her.

She gasps and sits up. Bolting in fright until she realises its Kylo back from his hunt. Silently shutting the door after him. The twists and scrape as he stares at her, smiling. Twisting the key in the lock. Hair falling, swirled in his face, from the wind that howled at the window ledges.

His cheeks are rosy. Restored. Big chest of his rising and falling. His shirt torn open. Two drips of blood darting down his linen shirt like crimson arrows.

She swallows. “I-I didn’t even hear you come in.” She sighs quietly. Her heart thrashing rudely loud at her ribs. Her neck shakes with her pulse. It pounds her ears like beaten skin of war drums.

“I can be very stealthy little dove. Always am when hunting my prey.” He smiles.

Her throat claws shut.

His eyes scan her up and down. She feels the spitfire of gold rake her skin. He smiles all the more. Savage smile. Sharp teeth flash white in the dim dark. She’d be terrified if she thought he might hurt her. Though she can’t deny she is a little scared of him in this state. If he was as dangerous as he said...

Where she sprang back. Her nightgown slid off one shoulder and rode up one knee. He eyes the goddess curved sculpt of her leg.

And he’s- undressing.

The dark shape of his arms go bunching behind his back. His coat falls like a black shadow down his legs. He chucks away his boots to clatter to the floorboards. She actually gasps again when he’s no shame in heaving off his bloodied shirt and shoving his breeches down his big thighs.

He’s stark naked and he’s fixed on her.

She clenches down between her legs when he approaches the bed.

Slowly creeping closer and closer. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. That predator instinct is engrained deep into his sated bones. His eyes burn her. Molten gold drips into her from them like acid.

Her eyes are so wide and stuck on him. He thinks her soft thighs might be trembling. He can hear her heartbeat thudding in her neck and pulsing prettily around her veins. He licks over his bottom lip.

“H-have you- um?” She seeks carefully. Daintily.

“I’ve fed dove. But do you know- I find I’m still ravenous...” He explains. Grabbing the covers from his side of the bed and flipping them off her. She fights off a squeak when the cool air rushes over her body.

Something about the brusque roughness of him does something delicious to her stomach. Makes her mouth dry and she thinks her entire body is now pulsing with lust.

“You mean-“ Her mouth drops open slightly.

“I can smell your arousal from over here dove. Your longing for me...” He smirks.

“I want to _taste_ you.” He says confidently. Smirk shining pearl. Eyes glaring gold at her.

She’s sure she feels a little faint. She pushes her hand in her hair and draws the plaited curtain of it aside. Looking back up at him. He tilts his head.

“Not there.” He leers. “Though I know you’d be delicious. Inside and out.” He smirks.

His large cock was starting to fill out, standing rosy thick and proud, as he puts one knee up on the bed and braces down on his hands. Palms flat to the bed for a second.

She’s confused. He clarified for her benefit. “Then where?” Comes her cute enquiry.

One hand slips between her legs and cups her cunt through her sheer thin nightgown.

Cups her like she’s some salacious wench from a brothel he’s laying despicable claim too, to take her to her boudoir, spread her legs and fuck her hard. Not to make love to her slowly with flowers and romance and candles, as the adored cherished wife he always treats her as.

Heat of her pussy is burning his palm and he absolutely growls. It bubbles up his throat and shatters across his deep wide chest like thunder.

“Here.” He gently moves his fingers. Turning his palm inwards. Stroking his two big fingers all. The seam of her petaled heat.

“I want to taste this cunt.” He smiles. Licking his lower lip again.

She shifts her thighs wider apart - just the tiniest fraction. Blood rushes out his head and down to his cock so quick it makes him dizzy. He’s nowhere near sated tonight and he thought he was. He needs her in his mouth and he needs her now-

He chuckles when he feels warmth and wet start to seep through his palm when he rubs her. His hand sneaks to his throbbing erection. He slicks a hand over his hard skin. Growls as he strokes her as he strokes himself.

She completely shrivels up with need watching him touch himself so brazenly. This is a night for brazen things - so it would seem.

“There’s more than one way for a man to give his lady pleasure...” He explains in a rush.

He doesn’t ask to lift her skirts. He does it for her. He rips them away from her thighs and pins them up at her waist. He grabs the fronts of her thighs and drags her across the bed to his mouth.

Her hips buck into his mouth with the first slow brush of his tongue parting her sticky warm lips. He huffs against her. Breath fogging against her. She choked and sputtered his name. Fingers tugging and tearing in the sheets.

“Kylo!” She cries his name and doesn’t know if she’s begging or sobbing.

He hums as he laps her up. She’s dripping and slipping noisily down his chin and he digs in his claws and pulls her closer to feast on her tender sex like a starved animal. His hair spilling over her stomach.

His unhurried tongue began slow sloppy descents down her puffy lips that his mouth was making pink and swollen. He groaned again as he slowly lathed her in kisses and long suckling licks. He sucked that hard little pearl of her clitoris into his mouth and kissed it. She bucks forwards again. Tears shining in her eyes.

He pulls back and let’s her see him. Watches her blush. Gold eyes stabbing into her from his place socketed between her legs. Tip of his nose inhaling deep into her pubis curls as he licks his lips. Chin and cheeks shining in the meagre half light of the dying fire.

His smile curling into her sex as he ensures she watches him drag his tongue up and down. Slow and firm. He strokes one hand down her fleshy thigh she winces at the drag of incredibly sharp nails - this beast has claws and he will use them on her now. His prey.

“Delicious.” He mumbles as he noses into her wet curls. Unable to resist suckling on that little pink bud again. The clawed hand he dragged down her thigh feels less sharp as he strokes the mouth of her cunt now with his fingers. Circling those puffy sweet lips that taste of roses and cream.

“I knew you would be...” He mumbles to himself as he lowers his head and licks her again. Sloshing his tongue into her as his fingertips cleverly trace her stiff slimy clit. Hard under his fingers like a taut little pearl. Shining in the sea of her honey-salt wetness.

He lets her feel when he just takes his lips and drags them across her. Closing his eyes and humming in bliss as he feels her pussy leak obscenely wet onto him. And then his long tongue swirls inside her and she really thinks she might scream and fly off the bed. She spreads her thighs wider apart. Desperate. Her hips shiver and jump into his face.

That clever clever devils tongue found a blissful rhythm in which to lap her up. She soaked his face and he was devouring every sticky sweet drop. She’s weeping into his tongue like syrup. Fingers now slotting inside her and curling gently as he circles in tandem with his cunning tongue.

Iris can’t speak. She can’t cry out. She’s forgotten her own name. There’s only wet sweet pleasure burning between her legs and in the pit of her stomach like simmering coals.

In her delirium and as her pleasure mounts, she looks down between her thighs, neck and chest sticky with sweat. And those golden savage eyes are watching her. They’re always watching. And there’s a smug smirk for her on his lips as he eats her up.

She’s trembling so much and her screams are manna to his ears. Falling on him like the finest notes from the finest orchestra. He sucks and nibbles and fingers her beautiful pussy til he shatters her entire world to glassy dark shards when she cums for him.

The shadows of the ceiling malformed, and now are scattered with bursting white stars as she clenches and clenches and then she simply lets something go and pleasure drowns her as she drowns his mouth.

It all rushed out her body. Breath, strength, wet and ecstasy.

She can’t even clamp her knees shut. She’s squirming and begging and panting his name. It’s too vulnerable. His strong hands hold her open as he bleeds every ounce of pleasure from her twitching cunt. Overstimulated and raw her wet lips almost hum and tremble with far too much pleasure. Swollen and raw pink.

Her pleasure dragged on and on. And on. She thought it would never end and she wails. Wrung dry and senseless.

Begging sobs now and her fingers are fisted so hard in his hair the sting of it makes him suckle a hard bite on her clit as he finishes licking up the sweet dreamy cream of her climax. Paints her orgasm on his lips like heather honey and he savours every drop.

He pulls his mouth off her - a sloppy wet pop follows. Strings of her and him join them together. His sharp teeth drip with her and he looks down beneath her lovely bottom to see the fragrant wet warm patch soaking dark into the sheets. He licks his lips and looms over her again. Knees stabbing into the bed.

“I’ll buy you more. Sweet dove.” He tells her. Her head is hazy and stuffed with dry fluffy cotton and she can’t make out her own legs - let alone what he could possibly mean.

His brute hands seize the neckline of her gown and pull. It rips apart in a shriek of linen. As easily as wet paper. She shivers in her damp spot on the bed, removing her arms from the ruined garment and then her husbands big brute cold and flushed body is over her.

He takes her lips with brute force. Swirls his tongue around her teeth and groans into her mouth. She should be scandalised and debauched at the fact that he’s kissing her and tasting of her wet sex. But she sinks into the melting kiss. Cups his cheeks and blushes to feel her climax is still wet on his unshaven cheeks.

He grunts in bliss. Bringing one hand down to the apex of his thighs. She trembles when he curls her hand in his and gets them both stroking his throbbing cock. Wagging and warm beneath her fingers. Warm viscous smears onto her belly from the angry flushed red crown of him.

“I’m not making love to you tonight. Tonight I need to fuck you deep and hard.” Is all the warning he can give her.

She arched her legs wide in preparation and not a second later they both feel bliss ravage their spines when he slaps his meaty thick cock to her cunt and plunged in smoothly in one long even thrust. Wet silk and warm honey to sink his cock into - by god, she’s perfect.

He’s not gentle in any manner. Matter of fact, he’s brutal. He leans back and smiles cunning down at her as he brings one of her legs up and places it on his chest.

When he pushes in again. Sawing into her, he reaches entirely new angles of pleasure and she sobs again because it’s almost too much- it’s red hot sparks and rockets up her legs and stabbing between her legs.

But then there’s this surge of gut deep primal pleasure and she knows this animalistic part of her husband is causing it. Fucking her like a beast in heat mounting their mate.

Something about him treating her that way sends a little flicker of arousal to lick at the base of her spine - she thinks she may just love this rough treatment.

She curls her hand to his big shoulder. Attempts to hold onto his slippery skin as she tilts her head up, mouth gaping to find his eyes devouring her. He sneers down at her like he’s in agony - he is. This cunt is far too heavenly to bestow on a demon like him.

“Perfect.” He says in a hush as he watches her. All of her. How her tits jolt with his thrusts. Ruby red nipples stiff little knots and that’s how he suspects she likes this side of him. Her blushing creamy cheeks. The way his cock splits her perfect pussy wide for him. It has this beast drooling on all fours for him.

She’s shaking for him. Overwhelmed with sensation and pleasure. He’ll fuck her right on through it. The thrusts don’t cease. He ruts his hips into her. Long, quick and deep. He bends low over her. Feels her hard nipples scrape his chest as he strokes and grabs a handful of her hair and pulls her rosy hot back to bite at it with little stinging vampire kisses. He won’t break the skin because he’ll probably fuck her so hard he’ll hurt her if he does-

He mouths sloppy kisses over her face. Peppering her with them like buckshot as his hammering hips don’t stop plowing his thick cock right to her cervix. She feels bruised inside but heavenly desire threatens every nerve. Pleasure just around the corner.

“Mmm. Iris. Oh- you’re so full of me. My sweet girl. So soft and wet. So full of your husband.” He grins against her ear. Sucking the shell of it. Kissing her pulse as his own pleasure races upon him.

“You love having the beast rut you don’t you my love? Love being my mate?” He sighs against her mouth as he cups her jaw and delivers a slanted shaky kiss to her mouth.

She sighs and kisses him back. Humming her agreement into the silky soft lips she adores. Grabbing his head to keep him trapped in the kiss. Nails raking his hair sweat dripping over every inch as their wet bodies slap and snap together. Ecstasy shooting like sparks through their blood. Her savagely warm heat kissing his shard of icy flint into beating.

His hips stutter to hers. He jabs into her sex deep. Two brushes of his silky hard cock against some incredible little spot and she cums. Muffling a cry onto her husbands neck as her taut body writhes and shivers around him. She clasps him close and daggers her nails into his shoulder. Biting her lip in bliss so she doesn’t scream the rafters down.

He shudders and shakes. Gulping deep breathes the way her cunt milks him dry. Every drop of him pulled out his body like she’s reached in and tugged it out. Leaving a raw wound in its place. It guts him. Gouges him. He’s never felt pleasure like it. Their souls are twining together with each joining they share. It’s love and bliss and _connection_.

He gasps her name. Sagging over her. Pining her to the bed. Big hands grasping the headboard. As he kisses her neck where she lays on the sticky wet pillow. He’s shoved her so far up the bed he was almost fucking her into the head of it. Clattering and slamming the headboard as he emptied into her deep. Searing her womb with the hot splash of his cum.

The beast had fed and now it’s rutted. And now it’s wanting to curl up to her chest, his mate, and purr. Mine. Mine. _Mine_.

Kylo draws back. Pulling his cock out of her clamping heat. She shivers with stimulation. He drips slick - hers and his mingled together. He hangs his head and admired the shining white mess they made of her thighs and her pussy.

He shuffles down the bed and pushes his nose up under her jaw. Mumbles little kisses onto her throat. Frowns a little seeing the dark bruises he’s put there. Butterfly kisses the violent blooming petals of the wandering vampire kisses -he lost control in giving her those.

“Tell me you’re not too scandalised?” He asks her after a few moments of panting and afterglow kisses pushed onto sweaty fucking-flushed skin.

She smiles and gazed up where he’s still hovered over her. She cards a hand through his swirled hair.

“I believe I am scandalised the perfect amount.” She grins warmly. Hoarsely. Sleepy eyes cloudy dark and her smile was eclipsed by tiredness.

“Regret marrying a bloodthirsty vampire yet?” He seeks, kissing his way down her body. Lapping at her nipples. Nosing at her soft belly.

“Never-“ She gasps when she feels his tongue swipe between her legs again. She sits up and her mouth hangs open to see his head and gold eyes between her legs again

He mumbles as he runs his tongue over her wet cunt again. Smirking still. “I never said I was done with my tasting. Little dove.”

She gasps sinking back onto the sweat rumpled pillow. Sex fluttering around his tongue. If that crushing endeavour didn’t just tire him out then this would be a _long_ night-

~


	21. Voyages

She felt such peace rush over her in waves. Sleep wasn’t a mere task anymore. It seemed to be almost a luxury. Flames lick like warm honey and splashed whiskey up her spine - heating her in lush bliss.

Bliss so divine it’s almost an agony.

Alone in the darkness of her room; her bed had been a dark cold land. Now it’s hers and Kylo’s different plain now. It’s their intimacy and their love all bunched together as they curl into each other at night. His muscles like cold slabs of marble at her back. Arms like cold columns securing her to his chest. Holding her safe. Possessing her.

She drifts in a dream state. A lake of warm honey and milk, and sun warmed silks lapping her body. Curling around her like it bore some form of muscle memory in its touch. Kind and reverent. Hands traverse her body. Over hills of bone and the rolling peaks of her soft shapes, lean hands with long knowing fingers wander across her skin like she’s a thing of wonder, a map.

His aura pulses off his skin. Life breathes coolly out of him like the cold north wind. Jasmine, wood sage, and elderberries dance like chirping violin notes up into her nose. Into her reckoning his little flutters of scent invade her dreams. That scent is familiar yet it remains a stranger to her-

Her head lolls back onto the soft down of a pillow behind her head. Her legs shift lazy and indolent. It feels far off in her own body, like she’s somehow stuck in amber like an insect or moulded into sticky dark syrup. Stuck in a pool of ink. Her blood feels like molten metal sloshing around her veins and carrying pleasure to every fingertip. To the roots of her hair. To her toes. She feels every spark of it.

_Lust_.

Wanton desire and it’s making a mess out of her. She’s spread open and pressed into a mattress. A body weighing her down into it. She’s sighing and trembling and her body rocks into the kind kiss of a pair of lips suckling at her chest. A clever tongue slips cool and fluid - like water - over her nipples that crest into his mouth. A tender kiss is placed on each peak. The buds stiffen under the caress of such a knowing mouth.

Words melt off his tongue onto her breasts like a pouring of cherry wine. _“How beautiful you are little spark... how bewitching.”_

She feels him hum against her skin. Voice beating through her blood and the tissue of her. Wracks against her trembling loud heart. She sighs. Still lost to sucking swallowing blackness. Bliss popping in fizzing sparking kernels in her bloodstream.

She whines - he moves. Slides lower as smoothly as a serpent. Presses kisses to the bony twins of her hipbones. Admires them. Those long fingered and patient hands, slender and supple, push her thighs apart.

She feels a burning kiss of metal on his fingers, rings burn cold and hard. Slotted on many of his slim fingers. Pressing their smooth stones into her legs. She doesn’t seem to register how differently these hands treat her- she only feels how they worship her with every touch.

Hair, feathers of long hair sweeps her inner thighs where they rest pushed far apart. Eased back to the pristine sheets she’s laying on. Crisp and white. Fallen snow under her sweating palms. A long slithering tongue drags through her curls. Seeking her sex and he finds it so easily. The pink petals of her velvet cunt that overflow and drip gladly onto his smiling lips.

Her hips buck into him. She can’t help it. Cunningly he moves to suck her swollen wanting pussy into his mouth. Curling along one side and then the other. Sucking those precious sweet lips into his mouth. Releasing them with a slurping pop. Every move deliberate. Every spasm of pleasure a punch to her gut. Like someone plunged a hand deep inside her and kept squeezing her spine.

She begs and sobs for this familiar stranger. Her thighs quiver around his ears like she’s scared. She should be. This angel between her thighs could slaughter entire cities with a click of his omnipotent demonic fingers.

Those fingers plunge deep into her instead. She cries and arches on the bed. Twisting her supple frame into the most gorgeous curve. Dark ancient longing carved into her bones.

A thumb weighted down with a coiling silver ring stroked over the top of her mound, whilst two long fingers stroke deep. His thumb is narrowly avoiding the hard pearl of her clit. He brushes it and listens to her whine. He’s teasing. He loves to tease. To edge til the ache becomes unbearable.

He sinks his fingers ever deeper with an obscene gushing squelch. Her creamy slick drips out over his fingers. He’s done this before. He knows her. He knows how to pleasure this delightful pussy.

_“I’ll have to tie you to these bedposts one day. Little Spark. Savour you for hours. Listen to this beautiful cunt drip and weep for me as I fuck it with my tongue.”_

His digits twist sharply in her and the pleasure that comes from that movement is just as savage. Brutal. His whole face pressed into her now. She feels the hollows of him. The absences and negatives and the spaces filled by his beauty.

He is beautiful. Yet her eyes can’t seem to open to see him.

The contour of a long almost sharp nose. His face is angular and pristinely carved. Delicate glass bones and paper skin. A Cupid’s bow for a pale pink upper lip. Alabaster cold porcelain for skin. One violent touch to his skin and it looked like it would shatter and splinter like eggshell or a sheet of unfeeling ice. Ice chip blue chunks were his eyes. Hair almost as pallid as his skin. Poker straight and light as white silk.

He laps deeply into her pussy. Devouring her clit deftly. Curling and hugging it with his tongue. Hungrily. This was a man of ancient years and infinite wisdom and yet almost young enthusiasm pours off him for pleasuring their little spark with his mouth.

He removes his fingers and he chuckles cruelly when he realises his cold metal rings would have made her jolt in shock - now his fine jewellery rings are coated in her. And that’s something he’ll take glad pride in wearing.

He replaces his fingers with his tongue. Eager to sip the ambrosial nectar of her cunt. To drink of her like he’s sipping down the sugary mortmorency wine he loves so much. Saccharine of her burning honey fire on his tongue.

Something he does wracks suddenly up her spine. She sits up and her eyes shoot open.

She’s in a baroque silver and blue bedroom she doesn’t know. On a bed she hasn’t slept in yet. And a man with blonde hair, brighter than the heart of the blinding sun, is between her thighs.

She only manages to see the shining topaz eyes dark with lust before she’s shoved back into reality again. She catches a snippet of his smile into her before she leaves.

Rudely dropped into life like the sickening shock of tripping over nothing.

She’s in a little creaking bed she does know. And this time there is a dark-swirly haired man between her legs. Lapping vigorously at her cunt. Globes of her ass clutched in his clawing hands as he kneels on the cold wood floor with her legs dangling over the edge of the tiny bunk she’s in.

It’s so wanton. So urgent. He couldn’t wait another moment. Not wasting another few seconds of rest; he needed her cunt in his mouth and that’s how she wakes up. Him plunging his face into her sweet heat. Still faintly sticky from their activities the night before. He licks up every creamy drop.

He’s kneeling on the cold floorboards, most likely getting all sorts of splinters rubbed red raw into his knees. Only his nightshirt on. His ass just starting to peek out of the bottom of the cotton hem. Sleeves falling down his arms where he grabs her ass and lifts her cunt to his face.

Cock, proud and thick and full-purple of blood, slapping to his stomach. Leaking precome to the floor in slithering long silky strings.

Wave after wave of bliss starts edging at her stomach as she wakes up from her erotic dream, slammed into this erotic divine actuality. Half slanted off the bed as he uses his mouth on her tender sex.

She gasps, mouth sticky from sleep, he hand slams to the side of the wooden carving of the bunk beside her hip. Scarlet covers tangled around her ankles. Nightdress bunched around her waist. Neckline crudely tugged down. Baring one pale breast for his eyes. But he can spy where the other nipple crests rosy stark and hard under the foggy white cotton.

“Ohh Kylo-“ She whines. Voice croaky and crackled. Not awake yet. She bites inside her lower lip to stifle another cry as he slurps and swipes her clit with his tongue. Smirking into her pulling back and teasing now only with the tip of his ruthless tongue.

He hears her nails rake the carvings beside the little bunk she’s trapped into. Forced to suffer his pleasure. Forced to suffer him tonguing his wife’s beautiful cunt til she shudders and shakes and falls apart.

They’d been given the biggest cabin on the ship and yet it’s still poky. Kylo’s used to castles and forests and rolling hills of space. The encroaching wood walls of such a richly furnished cabin is a newly different environment to him. A poky wooden box. It felt like a boxy tiny coffin tossed on the waves. Alas, however much he wants to grouse and gripe, he can’t deny it’s a opulently finished coffin.

There’s garnet dried-blood velvet drapes over the two little bunks. Twined into twisted mahogany wainscoting of the room. One single cot feather mattress stacked on top of the other in bunks. A wooden walnut ladder, carved with intricate flowing mermaids and fish to step up and access the higher bed. The deep dark wood made the velvet coverlets and icy sheets on the bed look all the more crisp and expensive.

The drapes keep out the cold and keep in the heat. They barely notice. Huddled onto the bottom bunk. Many nights on board the ship has Iris fallen asleep cradled on the bed of her husbands chest. Legs twined. Wedged onto their little bunk - ironically enough - like sardines. They don’t mind. It’s cosy. And sleeping in separate beds at this point is unthinkable.

Across the little cabin is a roll top escritoire that is socketed into the worn floor with a simple wooden chair. Theres a round antique French dining table with two green velvet louis chairs which they rarely made use of.

They’d been invited to dine in the captains quarters every night of the voyage thus far. He was a tall entertaining man. Weathered of face, burly of chest, thick of beard. As brawny and Scottish as oatcakes and kilts. He delighted them both with tales of his travels. Morocco, the Indian Ocean, Japan. He’s sailed the world five times over and seen most every port that exists. In his trusty passenger ship - The Octavia. A shimmering empress of the Scottish waves.

Next to the rounded dining table - obviously a hand plucked piece stolen out of France, chosen out of a flea market in la havre, according to Abernathy - there’s a chiffonaire plastered to the wall and laden with fat bottomed decanters of port and brandy shimmering in crystal cut carafes. Gold and leathered bound books sandwiched either side. Iris had read almost all of them by now.

There’s two tiny discs of golden portholes that show nothing but dull teal sea and grey chowder churning sky. The way the horizon pitches and rolls almost becomes dizzying. Its forever swaying - just like the ship does.

A Persian exotic rug is stretched out to obscure the floor, intended to make the room more cosy, trapping cold that might dare sneak up between the cracks in the old wood. The room is musty. Smells like briny sea salt, sun baked wood and lamp oil.

Iris got the impression it wasn’t a cabin that Abernathy let out often. Too preoccupé with his trade voyages. His own quarters being two paces down the creaking wooden hall, he seldom had such high paying guests to book use of the cabin.

Right now the cabin is dimly foggy with an impending dawn. Light spills in as blue as the sea and it’s becoming apparent that the way they sleep, so crammed together, skin to skin, does numerous things to stir Kylo’s libido.

Pressed all night to his wifes soft body - as they’re only separated by meagre scraps of cotton nightshirts?

Much too tempting. And their current predicament is the result.

Her thighs clamped over his ears. Her ass nestled in his hands as he spreads her wide and laps at her drooling cunt.

She feels herself slosh down his chin. He pulled back a little to smack his lips. Licking and getting every drop before diving in again. Sucking and working his big tongue in deep. She’s humming bliss and her thighs are starting to quiver in his hands. He’s smug at spotting the telltale glimmer of her climax threatening to break. Waves like the ones that slap the side of the ship at night. Breaking against the stern.

He growls and grunts his appreciations and encouragements into her. Hungry primal sounds. His gentility and manners went sailing out the window in times like this. She’s quickly learnt this fact.

He smirks as her spine arched into that beautiful beautiful curve. Shoulders rising off the bed. Nails raking down the wall. The other hand burning a fierce clutch of her nails daggering into his shoulder.

She cries for him like the call of the softest sweetest songbird. He laps her clean, of every drop, when she stops spasming and trembling her orgasm onto his lips. He holds her onto his face until her begging melts away.

Her deliciously soft thighs drop to the bed. Shaking still. His hands still cup her plump little ass in his massive paws.

He stands and looms over the bed. Licking his lips clean. He places sloppy sloppy wet kisses up her neck. Hands now taking her naked hips in his hands as he ruts their hips together. The hard yet silken steel of his cock weeping over the juncture of her thighs. Catching on every nerve of her wet and used cunt.

She gasps anew. Fingers sliding to tangle into the wild inky jumble of his hair. Clutching the back of his head. She can register his smirk against her skin. Pressing into her neck as he gently sucks over her blooming hot pulse. She also registers how he cups her ass again. A cheek in each hand and he tugs her closer to the edge of the bed-

“Don’t you dare think I’m done with you just yet.” He promises.

She does moan for him when his very hard and more than ready cock sinks deep inside her. Breaching her blissful heat. The wet velvet vice of her. He sighs with how gorgeous she feels - how she always feels wrapped around him tighter than a snug fist.

Moans tumble from both their mouths as he starts to fuck deep and fast. Ever since that full moon night, he’s unleashed more and more of the impatient animal that burns in his blood to love her fast and rough. And now he knows she likes it? _Oh,_ he’s ready to indulge her whims upon that to heaven and back.

He’s ready to get inside her and take her to heaven and back ten times a day.

He takes her ass and he snaps their hips together. Meeting in a crash of skin on skin, he wraps her legs around him and cries out when he sinks a little deeper. Curled over his wife as he loves her brains out, on their cramped little bed. Her mouth parts for him and she throws her head back. Elongating that swan neck that he loves to see.

Hungry, he can’t help it. He arched down over her. Freeing one hand to pull her nightdress down and suckle at those berry wine nipples. Sweet and hard in his mouth like boiled rosy sweets.

He laps and suckles and drags his tongue across those aching peaks til she begs him to continue sawing his hips into her. She needs that sweet fire burst of another orgasm deep inside. Wants to feel him pound hard. Needs the lusty connection of their joining. The warmth of his orgasm spurting inside her.

He can’t deny her. He sinks in again and regains his rough speed. He takes her mouth instead in a bruising kiss. His tongue curling to hers. Stroking along, she can taste the faded musky tang of herself on him. It kicks a flame of yearning to ripple at her stomach. So primal and dirty of him. But she secretly enjoys it - even if it does make her blush.

His thrusts bounce her up the bed with each thrust. She catches herself before she slams her head on the bed wall behind. Pleasure growing too great to even moan. They’re both sweating even in their thin flimsy nightshirts. The cabin is muggy and smells like definite aromas of sex. Sweat and musk. As obvious in the strangled air and the cloud of moans and puffed breaths that surround them.

He starts to grind slow and deep as he feels both their ends approaching. Long slow sounds leave his mouth as he pounds her in even steady thrusts. Deep strokes. Grinding his body up to hers to catch her clit. He wants her to sag and shiver when he’s done.

He can feel his climax bearing down on him like hunting dogs stalking a stag. Hers is close too. He can feel it in the ways she’s so tight she doesn’t let him pull back. Pussy swallows him deep and keeps him hostage. He wants to cry out for her to let him deeper. Rip her open, make a home inside her sucking walls and never leave.

He thinks he says her name as he cums. He’s not sure. Pleasure leapt out of nowhere and strangled him. He strokes his pleasure into her evenly and felt the hot splash of his ending fill her up. She thinks she may have groaned his name too - but she can’t think. She can’t register much beyond the pleasure racing through her foggy veins and the furious hum of her heart.

He hauls her legs and bottom close to him. Still joined sticky and messy together and crawls back on the bunk with her. His cool body half envelopes her as he crashes next to her. Huffing for breath as much as she is. Warm sated bliss swims through her like crashing waves of warm, thick milk cocoa laced with cinnamon.

She sinks her hands down his muscular form and feels the soft of his toned ass under her palm. Feels the fingernail scratches she left there, wounding him the other night. He likes that she almost studied his form. Loved on him the way he loves hers.

She rests her head on the pillow of his shoulder. He slides his arm around her. Tucks into her. She finds something warming in the fact they both look the same - nightshirts riding up over their hips. She’s slowly becoming more accustomed to being undressed in his presence. Or half undressed- as was the case the other day.

He couldn’t get her undressed fast enough. It was after their first night of dining in the captains cabin. It had been a sumptuous feast. The table laden for them all was phenomenal.

Silver candlesticks and white wax candles shone proudly. Residing light over the rich array of food. Boiled lobsters and crabs on a bed of green salad and waxy chopped lemons. A tray of pickled fish, herrings and sardines. Smoked mackerel pate with minced onions. Some salted slices of boiled beef. Lobster bisque, lots of loaves of fresh bread, and lots of flowing silver goblets of sweet scarlet red wine that kept coming and coming.

A couple of other passengers joined them to dine. A Russian dowager countess. Dowager Sokolov. A severe old woman with beady narrowed eyes and fligged out in enough jewels and fancy lace to sink this very fine ship. And then there was a German Doctor, Dr. Müller, from Hanover. A very studious and quiet man. Silver of hair, and always finely presented in a pressed tweed coat. With his cravat tied so well, it could have been measured with a ruler.

Captain Abernathy was very animated and gracious in his tales. The doctor, Iris, Kylo and the captain engaged in lively conversation. The Dowager merely picked at her food. Looking unamused. Captain Abernathy pours the Doctor more wine, and Kylo leaned over the table and said something low in Russian. The Dowager looked up at Kylo as if she’d suddenly seen blue pansies, devil horns and cuckoo clocks start to sprout out his hair.

Iris smiles as the woman starts to warm like butter to her husband. By the end of the night they’re toasting wine glasses together. Kylo holds his aloft and the Dowager is praising him for his Russian.

“Za vashe zdorovye.” He smiles as they clink goblets across the table.

And they even manage to get some good stories out of her as they all converse long into the star studded night. The Russian toast changes as the night goes along. Iris asks why and the Dowager explains to her that there are many many toasts to drinking in Russian. Ones for each special occasion.

By the time they stagger back to their cabin - the waves had been fierce by then the staggering wasn’t purely owed to drink. They kept bumping into each other not having got their sea legs yet. Kylo grabs her and as she spins and stumbles to his chest, that familiar flicker of newlywed craving takes hold-

Kylo can barely wait til the door is closed. He kisses and pushes his wife on her back on the infernal little bed - that hateful little bed he wants to take a match too.

He bashes his head on the headboard and growls but she soothes it with a kiss - and he simply lifts her skirts, parts her knees, unleashed himself from his falls and thrusts into her. Desperate. Urgent. Wine tasting tongues tangling together as they fall and rock and fuck in tandem and time with the roiling waves.

Thumping about the cabin and knocking things off the bed and on the floor as they mate like beasts in heat. After her first climax, he turns her around takes her on her hands and knees for the first time that night. He had to cover her mouth to muffle the screams.

When they’re done that night. Iris covers his face in kisses. Mouthed a kiss over every mole. Over his eyebrows and the tip of his nose. She thanks him simply for being him. For the man who bickers with his horse, who talks russian to lonely old cranky women, and whom rises to meet a drinking challenge from an old Scottish sailor.

Kylo didn’t pretend to have any care for humans - with a few very notable exceptions. But he doesn’t spurn them. No matter who they are, or what walk of life they are from. From jewel encrusted Dowagers to the lowliest old penniless sailor. There’s no snobbery and derision in his actions. That is what she adores.

Piled on their bunk now, upon a dawn, in a sweat slicked heap. They are lost to sleep again. She turns on her side, her back to him and he reels her in close. The mattress sagged heavily under both their sex sated bodies. Kylo tugs the velvet blankets and thin white sheets over them both.

Snuggles down behind her and buried his mouth in the back of her hair. She’d used the last of her heather honey soap up in Scotland. Now using the small wrapped one he’d bought her there. It smells like golden sweet comice pears and geraniums. Sugary, green and calming. He misses something about the wilderness of the heather and oakmoss and highlands being twined into her muddy autumn bronze hair.

He brings his hand up and lazily traces a fingertip down the line of her jaw. Trailing down her warm neck. Shifting hair out his hands path. He feels the slow warm shudder of her pulse beneath his hand. It roots him. That earnest little movement. Life beats about her body and he’s so in love with every pump of her ever so generous heart.

Sleep comes easily to him. He cuddles his wife and he can’t even pinpoint when he dropped away to rest. He goes to it holding her close. Sweet pears and geranium flowers drifting their scent into his dreams. Following him into slumber. As if he was stood under a pear tree as warmth from the sun leeched away his coldness.

The scent of those pears makes him recall one province in ancient Pakistan he’d wandered through some centuries ago. When he’d been a sell sword for a rich sultan in the middle east. Rusty clay walled streets filled with biscuit coloured dust. Houses light and rife with arches and columns in white and blue.

The strangling air is thin, and crammed full of blazing heat and spice - cinnamon, cassis, cardamom, and saffron - and underlying that is the noise and stale sweat of many bodies crushed in the moving swelling crowds. The notes of the pungi, from the beggar who sat on the corner with a hemp basket with a red and black cobra inside. On his mat, barefoot in the dirt. Peacocks brighter than the blue seas cawed along the walls and wandered freely in the urban messy sprawl.

He’d just wandered. Walked around the markets. Local street urchins clinging to him, he was the tallest strapping man in the crowds and a swathe cut around him. The adults were scared. The children were fascinated by his sword, his rich clothes and the pallid colour of his skin. Kept on rubbing his hands as if his colour would come away on them like chalk.

They clamoured around him like flies and smiled so bright he almost forgot they were hopping with fleas and clad in nothing but rags. He bought a huge bulging bag of dried fruit from one stall where the man very vigorously tried to sell him a mangy old goat.

He gave out all the dates to the children instead. Dates and all the coins he has on him. He had no use of either of them. The sultan he worked for paid him in vast treasures. Bags of loose rough cut gems - sapphires and rubies. Poured them into his hand like spills of blue water and ruby blood.

Some of the urchins peel away laughing after he gifts them money or food One particular wordless little girl stays. Clinging onto his hand. Leading him somewhere. He can’t detect any malice in her intent. And if he did, his sword strapped to his hip, heavy against his thigh would save him from trouble.

She led him to a garden. In the heart of this dry noisy city. There’s so much gold and green he almost can’t believe his eyes. It’s near the well the sultan paid him to free from the tyranny of a vicious ruler who starved the city of water, starved thousands to their deaths until Kylo slaughtered every last man stood in his way. And when he found the perpetrator? He stuck his sword through his neck and threw the bastards severed head to the angry mob.

The little girl pulled him into the paved courtyard full of pear trees. Hanging fruitful and golden. Beautiful elder women in powder blue shalwar kameez draped over their tan skin, were reaching up, gold bangles shimmering on their wrists as they pick the butter yellow pears from the offering branches.

Kylo’s heart had been hardened and frosty ever since he left Draegan. He’s always been one to shy away and turn his back on quaint mortal customs. His lover had always admonished him for being so cold towards humans. He reminded him he was human once too, a long time ago. He shouldn’t be too quick to spur everyday acts of ordinary kindness when they came his way.

That little girl, with her gap toothed smile and scrappy filthy linen dress, tugging him to the green oasis just to see the pear trees, had made him smile.

He reaches for the pouch safely tucked into his coat. He clutched the pouch in its entirety and bent to his knees to take her tiny little hand. He poured the red gems into her palm until they spilled over. The smile and look she gave him in return was the warmest thing to grace his heart since his own actions gouged it out his chest.

He’d seen far too much bloodshed in this Middle Eastern pilgrimage. Too much warring and slaughter and death. The powerful rich slaughtering the powerless poor. Been so long since anyone had shown him simple pure kindness. He paid it back in kind and cursed Draegan for his all knowing propensity for always always being right.

He often drifts and picks over his travels when he falls asleep. Sometimes it’s gentle, kindness and beautiful warm places he’s seen - other times it’s violent and it’s his rage. Burning acetous down his throat like bile as he slaughters and kills and recalls the harrowing screams.

His eyes open to sunshine flooding their little cabin. And a half dressed wife has her back to him. Chemise and front fastening stays on she she looks into the smudged little mirror to arrange her hair with a handful of pins.

He can tell she’s washed and bathed. The clean chalk of soap hangs around in the air. The cabin boy on board did his best to warm the scant water they were given each morning but it was still a bracing dip on the most part. It was little more than a cursory rub down with a cloth standing in a bucket of freezing water.

Kylo noticed that Iris took her time to bathe. Even if it was freezing, she liked being and feeling clean. Especially after the sweat they produce at night with each other.

“Were you going to leave me laying here dozing all morning?” He asks. Eyes shut. Head turned towards the ceiling. Smile cracking his lips. His legs and groin twined with the red and white blankets. One hand flops over the side of the bunk.

Iris smiles. She doesn’t turn back but his keen eyes spy the corner of it quirking up in the mirror reflection. Pinned to its little spot on the wall.

“I woke up, was far too excited to fall back asleep and so I started packing our things.” She explains.

“You looked contented I thought I’d let you rest.” She adds.

Turning back as she finishes sliding the last pin into her hair. Stepping back across to the little bunk he’s invading all of. Almost too big to fit. He raises his head, folds in his neck rippling up under his chin he looks and sees that indeed she has the luggage trunk splayed open across the room. She didn’t have her own trunk. He’d insisted she share in his so all three of her gowns didn’t get crushed.

Today she’s picked an ash grey wool. It goes nicely with the little blue there is in her eyes. Lifts it out. He lumbers up from the bed, sitting with his legs thrown over the edge of the bunk as he laced up the back for her. Inbetween pale hills of her shoulder blades he works. Tying her dress onto her.

She thanks him with a sweet rosy smile and steps away to pull on her coat. He knows she’s going for her customary turn about the upper boat deck. They were coming into port today. She wanted to see if she could catch a glimpse of the german shoreline on the endless blue horizon - the one she’s been staring at all day.

Kylo knew she likes going on deck. She says hello to the sailors. Sits on the spare barrels dotted around deck and sketches the seagulls and likes breathing in the salty open air. She doesn’t mind that the sailors sing lewd shanties or behave differently, more crassly, than the men she’s used too.

She laughed loudly at a particular joke one of them told her. Involving a pig, a set of bagpipes and a prostitute. Kylo thought she’d be wary of the working men on the ship. They’re all brawny and built like bears and dense as bulls. The one who told her the lewd joke had a wooden peg leg. She sat nicely and asked him about it for a while. Asked him about his life.

In a lull on the ship they play the fiddle, or cards. Sitting their smoking the tobacco they kept in their flat caps from sailors pipes. Smoking smell of frying fish they’d caught on lines hanging off the ship, as they griddled haddock over the flames. Singing songs about golden skinned Spanish women with long waves of black hair, and seductive red lips.

Kylo was surprised to come up one day to hear her singing among them. Teaching the peg leg one - whose name was Teague - a [cornish lullaby](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VBdu1n8Y7k) shanty that her Grandma taught her when she was a little girl. He stayed in cover of the ships stairwell and watched as she conversed with the mannerly yet rag tag bundle of rough hewn sailors.

A smile tugged at his lips. He knew right then that she could handle whatever came her way at Ranlor as his Lady. Because she likes people - and they seemed to like her back. No one is too above or below her notice. Life doesn’t scare her. People don’t scare her. He’s glad that all those years of misery under her mothers oppression had not dulled her enthusiasm for liking others.

If she doesn’t have half of Ranlor castle, or the staff, or the tenants, mad in love with her by the end of the month, then he’d be vastly surprised. Hell, within two weeks of knowing her, his damn horse already liked her better.

“Let me bathe and dress and I’ll come up with you. Can’t leave you defenceless against all those randy sailors wandering about.” He japes as he creaks up to a stand and lumbers across the tiny room to the cupboard of a wash chamber.

“They’re perfectly fine.” Iris smiles. Securing on her boots. It got chilly on deck she needed all the help she can get. “I think one look at the size of you and that scowl of yours, and they have no choice but to behave themselves.” She tells him.

He smacks a kiss to her cheek. Growling. “Good.” Proud of the fact he’s instilling some terror into men who should rightfully know she’s taken.

She helps tie his cravat for him when he re-emerges after his cursory freezing cold scrub down. Moaning like a grizzly bear that he can’t wait to have a proper warm bath again. On dry land. She ignored his rumblings and helped him dress. Looking too handsome in his black waistcoat, red cravat and white shirt. He slips on his shining boots and tugs an overcoat up his arms and then they’re ready to go.

They get out their cabin and take the tiny dark creaking stairs up and out. Into the salty air and the overcast sunshine. Wind cuts sharp on deck. Carved sharply to the bone. They walk down the steps from the upper deck. Coming to the port side. Iris watches the sun glitter and bounce off the waves, as the bow of the ship cuts through them like a hot knife slicing through butter.

The water looks grey and green today. Smudged with dark sapphire blue. Like a handful of precious gems scattered under the surface. Gulls cry and wait ahead in the soaring wind. Disappearing beyond the dirty-bone coloured stretch of the sails hoisted into the cloudy sky.

Iris nods a good morning to some of the sailors - not today lounging around on deck. Some were up in the rigging. One in the crows nest. The stretch of water is quiet and slow coming into port. Almost every hand on board is lugging barrels and cargo up onto deck from the hold, ready to heave it off the ship when it made port.

Up the far end close to the bow is a makeshift animal pen. Erland and Kana share the space with a rambunctious head-butting ram and a doddery old pair of bearded billy goats who chew everything in sight. Erland was quick to establish his dominance on the week long voyage. He doesn’t see his lord and lady come on deck - his snout is buried in a pail of hay, chaff, and the last of some Scottish oats.

Kylo and Iris chose a spot near the port side. Stand with their hands on the edge of the ship bannister. Looking out as the jagged shoreline of Germany eats away the sea. Land comes into view at last. The wind howls bitter and she huddled into her husband. Listening to the sailors behind them ready all the luggage and cargo to be offloaded. The cabin boy brings up the guests luggage and belongings. Starts to make ready the cabins for other visitors. Ones going home to England.

Iris almost felt melancholy as she had stood and watched the ship leave the shore of the country she had called home for all three and twenty years of her life. A odd sadness rang in her stomach. Settled into the marrow of her bones she couldn’t shake. England couldn’t be a home for her anymore. And there still absolutely would be things about it she would miss.

The loss of something that she thinks makes her up. Her very person. Her very being. Her homeland.

She’ll miss smell of an English Bluebell wood after the rain. Wood pigeons calling across a sunny evening. Listening to her silly shrieking sisters putting in their paper bows at night. The quiet old stooping figure of her father who loved her dearly more than his words could ever admit. The comfort of him being near. Like the proud, studious, aged old oak tree he was: the pillar of her strength and he hadn’t even known it.

She’d miss Cook and her Irish venison stew with carrots, leeks and peas. And Meg and Julia’s propensity for weekly heartbreak and gossip. She’d miss the Cocoa they made her at night spiced with nutmeg. She’d miss every lovable character who had peopled her youth.

Only- she isn’t a youth anymore. She’s a Lady with a whole new set of responsibilities and freedoms at her fingertips. Within grasping distance of them. It’s dizzying and daunting. But Kylo has never given her any indication that she couldn’t make him more proud than she already does. She’s ready. Life awaits just across the channel. In a new unfamiliar land. New friends and new adventures beckon her across the sea.

She does feel melancholy as her dear sweet England becomes nothing but a rocky spec on the horizon.

They’d had a wonderful day to set sail from Scotland. Sampson met them at the Inn. Mrs M hugged them a tearful goodbye. They made for port in Aberdeen slightly earlier than planned after a few hours travel. Whilst they waited for their luggage and their bossy horse to be loaded on deck, Kylo ducked away and found her a treat before they set off.

He came back clutching two newspaper bundles of something that smelt so heavenly Iris couldn’t resist. Fried battered fish and chips and he’d smuggled them a bottle of dark plum stout beer in his coat pocket.

They sit in the little busy grey stone Harbour that reeked of fish, and tobacco and smoke from braziers, and was filled with sailors and seagulls aplenty. In amongst barrels and crates, empty lobster traps and cargo and their feet crushing old knotted fishing nets.

They ate the delicious food, still steaming hot. The fish is flaky and delightful under the crisp bubbly batter, and the chips are sprinkled with sharp vinegar and salt. They cradle the paper bundles and eat their hearty meal. Smiling as they watch the cabin boy try to coax a stubborn Erland up the gang plank. Yanking his bridle and the headstrong lump didn’t budge so much as an inch. Safe to say Erland was not a fan of boats.

And she’d laughed and forgot her woes when her husband had hugged her from behind. As she had stood and watched her homeland vanish before her eyes. Rocks of England blurring into the sea. He kisses her cheek. “You’ll see them again. I promise you. Time apart and they’ll be howling mad to come and see you.” He tells her.

“I hope so.” Iris says. Rubbing over his hand on her stomach.

“I _know_ so. Lady Ren. And I’m rarely ever wrong.” He growls a sweet kiss to her ear.

Knowing that even thought she had her life’s happiness in him - there was some wrenching deep down for having to separate from everyone she’s loved and known.

She put her hands over his and rocked back into the safe harbour of his chest. Her calm port in the storm for if she ever felt lost at sea.

Now, they watch as they come closer to the German port. The boat eats away at the sea until there’s no more. Slowing right down to weave amongst the smaller fishing boats hopping along on the choppy waves. The port of Kiel-Götborg was the one they were docking into. From there, Kylo explains it is only a three hour journey into the alps and into the rocky road that will wind them homeward.

She’s feeling new rushes of excitement at seeing this new land reveal itself. Even more so when the ship is steered into its resting stop in true port. Sampson offloads their luggage for them. Iris tries to help - Kylo grabs her hand and holds it. Smiling.

“I’ve paid the lad a substantial wage for this voyage. My love. He’s not wanting. Trust me - and start thinking like a lady. He sends that employment money back home to his family. It’s patronage in action.” Kylo winks at her. Iris blushes a little.

“I suppose I ought frame myself in that mindset now we’re married.” Iris supposed with a seeking frown that told Kylo she was slightly upset with herself for not changing.

“If you think I married you to expect you to turn into someone you’re not. You are sadly mistaken. I married you for _you_. My dove. For all those little qualities I admire.” He smiles. Pulling her close and kissing her temple. She smiles.

“You’ll be a magnificent Lady of Ranlor.” He tells her with confidence. He never held any illusions that she’d be anything less.

She turns and kisses his lips before they go to walk down the gangplank.

Iris smiles as Teague offers his massive brawny hand to Iris in parting. Bidding her well. Iris shook it firmly - like a stout businesswoman - and told him to look after his other leg. It made the grizzled man laugh. Kylo likes that she had warm impacts on people. He has a feeling these rough hewn sailor lads will be sorry to see her go. They walk down the plank of wood socketed to the paved cobblestones of the port. Iris steps off the plank and onto this new land.

They walk through the bustling port. Cut into the land. Up a steep hill the port rises off into the distance, sailors jostle past them with sacks of duffel belongings on their shoulders. Men rolling barrels. Carrying crates along pulled by horses and traps, and trolleys.

Unfamiliar German language bubbles about her ears. There’s braziers burning. She can smell chestnuts and some sort of spicy pork being roasted over the stall grills. Aswell as a smoky delicate fish, cooked in butter and fried or dipped in beer and batter. Sold with crispy fried potatoes - it was called scrumpy back home, she imagines the name is different here. The smell of the grilled meat is making her mouth water. This is dirt and labour and life. All smells and sounds and sights intermingled with the promise of what the salty tide could bring them.

There’s vendors with little tables covered with cloth selling pouches of spices. Heaps of it in an array of warm yellows and reds. Orange like the sunset. Saffron, canary yellow curry powder, peppery fiery cloves, and pea green kernels of cardamom. Some stalls sell dried bunches of flowers in dusty shrivelled heaps and hues. There’s another selling fine wares and antiques.

Some gypsy girls come out of nowhere. In plum embroidered dresses with cream aprons, with flowers stuffed in the pockets. Red and pink roses and fat peonies. Iris smiles at them. They were beautiful little things. With golden brown skin and long hair as black as onyx. Obviously sisters. She gives them three pennies and takes one ivory rose. They scuttle off eventually. Thanking her in German.

“Patronage in action.” Iris states as the girls scarper away and she sniffs her rose, smiling. Kylo kisses her hand. Of course it is.

They wind through more crowds. Through more stalls and more scents and people buffet past them. She’s particularly intrigued by one stall selling local German bread. Some strange looking loaves. All knotted and twisted and sprinkled with salt.

Kylo sees her staring. “Laugenbretzel.” He leans in and tells her. “Made from dough and knotted into shape to bake. Served with salt or hot mustard, or sometimes sugar.” He offers.

Stepping aside to then allow a fellow leading an ancient looking donkey through the crowds pulling barrels of Hefeweizen beer. He steps back to her when the man passes and approaches the little stall. Digging a coin out his pocket and putting it in the vendors palm.

He reaches up and unhooks one from the rack their displayed on. Walks across to Iris and breaks off a piece for her to try. “German delicacy.” He promises. And he’s right- the dough melts on her tongue. And the salt bursts it’s plain spice. A delicious bread stuff. Even Kylo had a piece. He hadn’t purchased one of these in years.

Iris ducks her head around her husband and smiles to the vendor selling his delicious foods. “Sehr gut.” She announces.

The portly man offers her a smile and a nod and a pleased response. They carry on through the thronging crowds. Through the unfamiliar sights and people. Past the pubs where drunk sailors sing in raucous German and glory, even though it’s only noon.

Iris is too busy looking up at the buildings. They’re much different to await sagging stone cottages, fashioned of cotswolds style and stone. Here, they are tall and narrow. Built slenderly from timber, and some are painted. Little wooden crosses standing out the walnut coloured wood.

Cobbled alleys and medieval timbered houses make up a lot of the villages in Germany. Quaint and rustic in warm yellows and ruddy browns with terracotta tiles on the roof. The houses here shine, painted in those different earthy colours. Butter yellow and brown. Cramped together in squashed little towns that look homely to exist in. Too homely to be true.

She looks down from admiring the many German beer taverns crowded around the grey port. Inundated by sights and scents, when she looks down again. A dash of bright silk catches her eyes. Electric blue and stark lilac. When the crowds thin out near the road leading to the port and the docks. She fully smiles.

Jomar is here to greet them.

Stood waiting on his Lord and his Lady in front of another Ren crested coach. Pulled by two shimmering white horses. And the familiar driver, Ramsey. Who tips his hat at her in recognition.

Jomar’s face breaks out into a smile when he catches sight of Kylo’s singular frame towering over the crowds in his tall hulking heft.

He stands with his hands clasped in front of him. A lilac silk Dastar wound on his head. His coat was the brightest blue satin Iris had ever seen. Stitched with beige peacocks with beads for their bright green feathers. Silver and pepper goatee as arrow straight as usual. Coat and his warm walnut eyes shining, sparkling cleverly in the meagre sun. Silver bangle on his right wrist. That cloud of perfume, of mango and coconuts, still swirled exotic and fruity around him.

Iris smiles gladly when they weave their way across to him. He seems equally as pleased to make their acquaintance also.

“Pleasure to see you again. Mi’lord. It really has been too long.” His burnt ember eyes sparkle with mirth as Kylo let’s out a long suffering sigh and a smile. Clasping his butler’s hand as they shake them warmly.

Jomars eyes practically melt when he looks upon Iris. “Lady Ren.” He says. With the notes of a man so proud and happy it makes Iris break out into one of the most glad grins of her entire life.

“It is exquisite to see you. Welcome to your new home. Mi’lady. I expect you’ll be happy for a change of scenery. Being stuck on a creaking tub with naught but his Lordship for company.”

Iris is nearly laughing. Kylo’s rolling his eyes. “It was quite awful.” She japes.

“I have so missed your impertinence. Can I interest you in a docked wage at all?” Kylo asks dryly.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I need every penny I can get looking after you. Not, however for looking after a woman as lovely and beautiful as the new reigning Lady of Ranlor.” Jomar lightly bows to Iris.

“Kiss ass.” Kylo mutters under his breath. First his horse and now his Butler. Would the treachery never cease? He thinks not.

Iris slides her hands into her husbands. Sharing a loving smile with him. Telling him it was the best honeymoon she could ever have asked for.

“I shall see Sampson onto a trap cart with your luggage and the horses.” The excellently impertinent Butler insists. Always taking care and organising.

Jomar looks across to his master. “You do wish to head direct for home, I take it?” He asks. Ever the efficient man.

“ _God_ yes.” Kylo smirks. Helping his wife glide onto the coach step.

“Ranlor Castle. As fast as you can ride those colts Ramsey. I’m eager for my divine bride to see her new home.” He beams. Winking at Iris to make her blush.

She’s all aflutter to see this fine castle at last. His home. _Their_ home.

~


	22. Homeland

Kylo’s explanations of his native land proved true; Iris was enchanted from her first glance.

They passed quaint little hamlets and impossibly neatly hemmed towns. Thin tall timber buildings like the ones in the port, woods and forests dominated everywhere- she liked that. Birch tree woods and thick gigantic forests.

The coach with its huge wheels and comfortable red scarlet interior scampered over the roads and stone bridges and cold wintry lanes.

Iris is perfectly mesmerised as they pass through another forest. She’s never seen trees so tall, so brutally huge she can’t even glimpse at the sky. Only the foggy green of their tips. The gentlest smears of white blaze between their tops. Overcast light of day could barely reach the dense mossy forest floor. The dappled brown-silver bark on the tree trunks rarely saw sunlight. Woods so deep and black she can quite see how they would be doubly eerie at night.

She can see why Kylo loves these woodlands. The ones of his homeland. She could understand how he could feel so at one, at peace, with the density of the beautiful deeply dark forest. The air here seemed so bright and crisp, she could scent the vivid notes of it even through the carriage door.

It snuck in the cracks in that velvet door. Spice of pine and holly and tree sap. Thick claggy mud encrusted with dry leaves, and the kind of crisp clear sky before rain threatens. So cold it sent a chill down her spine. Distant tang of woodsmoke that hinted at a village hidden beyond the thick tree-line. She wants to slide down the window panel in the door and have that cold whip her hair and tangle in her lashes. Breathe in this new land, this new home.

She’s never known a landscape like this one. She’d seen the untamed peaks of the highlands and the sheer beauty of the dales and lakes of yorkshire. Neither of those things compared to the beauty of these rocky jagged mountains. They loomed over the gigantic forest. Standing guard like a stocky protector.

The forest clears, thins out, and they crawl even further up the mountain. They come to a little town. Just as serene and quaint as all the others they’ve passed. Medieval German with mustard yellow walls and walnut timber. There’s courtyard squares and arches and cobblestoned streets. The wood of the timber frames and stone pavements of the town is formed, chipped out of the very side of the mountain it sat on.

They pass by a beautiful round fountain set in the town square. Ladies and gentlemen walking around the little village. Taverns offer shelter from the bitter winds.

She imagines in winter they can be the cosiest place to escape to from the elements. Fires roaring. Intimate oak tables and a pint of famed German beer. Who could want for more simple pleasures in life? She’s sure as a landed lady she shouldn’t admit to that. But after their cosy pub excursions in Scotland she is satisfied by that meagre thing.

There’s lots of cafes and bakeries. She counts six. The usual small town wares. A general mix of places. Dressmakers, tailors, haberdashers, butchers and delicatessens. She understands the regions specialty’s are smoked cured meats and cheeses and some red wine she’d never heard of.

The coach seemed to attract a lot of attention as it passed through town. People stopped and gathered in crowds to point and talk. Some even waved. Clearly the locals hereabout were used to the sight of Lord Ren’s magnificent coach. The crest on the door signifying the gentry within.

The carriage roars and clacks across the cobbles. Passing under a beige stone concrete arch near the clock tower that ended the little village and set them upon a climbing road once more. Soaring up the mountainside.

“Keep your eye on that mountain, right over there..” Comes Kylo’s voice at her ear. He points at a spot on the windowpane. Gloved fingertip touching to the glass.

She turns and looks and he smiles watching her profile. His hand drapes itself decadently over her hip. Covering it. Holding her rounded thigh.

“Are we near?” She asks giddily. Her stomach flying into knots at the prospect of the coach eating away the distance to his castle. She turns back and his face is right there, next to hers. Handsome melting dark eyes and lips like pink rose petals.

He leans in and kisses her gently. Plucks her into a sweet pressing kiss. His whole body slanted into her.

The kind of kiss that was the sweetest most loving hint. Hinting to much much more seductive things when they’re properly alone-

“We most certainly are.” He offers. He nods over her shoulder and when she turns back around, her lungs empty in a gasp. She expected to be stunned. And she rightfully is.

Perched on the very mountainside. On a sloped hill, perched atop acres of forest. Stands the great sturdy strong stone of Ranlor castle. A huge cluster of orderly turrets with a silver roof and ivory snow walls that makes it look like a shimmering castle chipped right out of a chunk of marble. Snow and frost is just starting to cling to the tops of the thick of trees surrounding it.

She can’t peel her eyes away from the sight of its turrets spiking upwards from the land, sharp and impressive, like ivory fangs, dominating over the forest. Eclipsing in its beauty like the large pale moon.

She touches her fingers to the cold glass. As if she could reach out and stroke it’s solid cold walls. The fact of this beautiful castle now being her home calls to mind the old trope belonging to fairytale endings. But she never would be satisfied by something so neat. There were never endings. Only ever new beginnings.

Seeing Ranlor seems to trigger her insecurities to come bubbling to the surface. She wants to bat them away and remind herself once more of the resoluteness of Kylo’s faith in her. She wills herself to be strong. Fills her bloodstream with valour and hope instead of feelings that will crush her. Make her feel not good enough.

She’s had 23 years of not feeling adequate. Thanks to a mother who saw her as little else than a potential bride and broodmare for the right price and suitor. She holds firm not to let this new land and home have her scared to be good enough.

Kylo squeezes her hand. There isn’t far to go now. And he can feel her trepidation shaking her bones like a violent storm. She may have tried to tamp it down but he can feel how she doesn’t stop whirring with thought.

They power along over more roads and she pays careful attention to the forest that looms thicker and blacker around them now. She watches deer scarper into the trees, birds scatter up into the canopies. A wildlife stuffed forest and no mistaking. She knows amongst that tree line, darker things may lurk. Sharper claws. Bigger teeth. Darker appetites.

She peers out the window even more when she sees a foggy grey blur moving quick through the trees. She squints and tries to make it out when a low piercing howl shatters the silence of the tumbling coach wheels and the crackle and shift of it tumbling over the road. Through the flashing strobe of the tall trees as they fly past.

A wolfs howl.

She looks across to Kylo, rightfully worried. “Trust me, Dove. They pose no danger to you.” He instructs. Something clever and cunning lurks in his eyes.

“You’re sat next to a beast far more animalistic.” He winks. Shoots her that salacious grin. She smiles despite her worry.

Turning back to look out the window. More of them dash through the trees now. Cutting around the forest and running alongside the coach’s haring speed. Picking through the trees. More and more join until theres a pack and they easily keep pace with them. They are huge hulking beasts.

Kylo speaks in offering explanation. “They can scent you. That’s why they are so interested. A newcomer to Ranlor castle. It falls on the boundary of their territory. They have an interest in the fact, and forgive me for phrasing it this way, but- the fact that they can tell you are my _mate_.” He tells her.

She feels her cheeks heat. Nervously chews the inside of her lower lip. She forgot, that here, his homeland, this wood, is the seat of all Kylo’s carnal power and primality. He told her once that he was a territorial creature. That animal vampire instinct is fused into his being. She needs to make herself remember that more often-

She turns back and watches the wild animals.

The wolves peel away when their coach comes to a large wrought iron gate. Gothic and tall and imposing. A prancing emblem of wolves on a coat of arms looms frightening and sharp of tooth at the gates very top. Where the two sides meet. Now they are pushed apart and the coach soars through onto the land that was very much entirely his. The wolves stop at the gates. Howl and cry at the perimeter. Pace along the gates and piercing predator eyes stare in through the rails. They can go no further. For the master is home.

Kylo’s dearly missed this. All of it. The driveway to his home. The long brown ribbon wind of it carving through the woods. He knows every rut and bump in the lane to his threshold. He’s missed the smell of the wood that seeps into everything. It’s in his clothes. The castle. His bedding. Thick murky green and bark and muddy damp. The forest. Bavarian mud. Rain. Wilderness. _Home_.

He thumbs across the back of his wife’s dear hand. His grip engulfed her little palm but somehow this homecoming seemed all the sweeter with her here. He can’t pretend he wasn’t a creature who didn’t succumb to loneliness before he knew her- the simple pleasures of knowing he’ll never feel lonely again is truly a marvellous thing.

That big echoing castle will feel slightly less unoccupied now she’s here. He knows he can venture out in search of her. His beautiful singular creature.

Iris is still marvelling at the sheer beauty of this woodland. If this were her home, she’d never want for anything more.

“And you came to the most boring flat part of England, why again?” She jokes with him. He chuckles. All this for view and he’d left it to take a long journey across Europe.

“Would you believe me at all if I said I wanted a change of scenery...” He bargains.

Truthfully he can’t be sure what took him to England. It had been no desire for society that was for damn sure. Maybe it was the lulling boredom of his solitude. He can’t pinpoint it. He just knew something in his being, fused into parts of him he couldn’t name, called him across to sea to Hellford Park. Something inside told him to go- so he went. And he’d personally spend the rest of his life thanking every star in the heaven that he did.

“No. I’m sorry. You’ll have to come up with a more convincing lie than that. No sale.” She offers which makes him smile more. He leans over and kisses her cheek for that.

“I went for a diversion. And I found my lifes happiness. There. Now that’s every truth.” He drawls into her neck nudging her with kisses.

“Try not to muss me up so your poor staff think me a dishevelled messy woman.” She asks of him.

She should have asked anything else. He smirks as he leans across her and cages her into the corner her side. Nuzzling with his nose and nibbling on her neck enough to leave a red patch.

“Ask anything else of me. My love. I like it when you’re all blushed and rumpled.” He moans onto her skin. Eyes starting to swirl gold with his oncoming aura of lust and naughtiness.

She gasps and tries to turn her head away. “You are every inch a wicked man.” She laughs. Letting him off with a kiss to the lips and that’s all her mischievous Lord is getting for now. It must do him.

“And well you know of it. Sweet wife.” He intones saucily before retreating after stealing just one more kiss.

Her attention can’t be his any longer - for it is captured as the woods finally clear, to be governed by an impressive stone archway. Leading into a bridge with a sudden sheer drop of a cliff.

A high cobbled road leading to a twin arch which opened out onto a pale grey courtyard beyond that. Massive it was too. Enough room for fifty carriages to turn in a circle before exiting again. And this was only one tiny glimpse of the whole castle. This is just the threshold. The rest of it looms back into the distance. Curling into the towering hillside near the mountain.

They clack over the road and under the massive staked portcullis hovering above the archway. Pinned to the carved stone walls which bore the same emblems as that of the gate. A leering reminder of wolves that lurked in the forest and in the tempest of Kylo’s blood. Raw and ruthless. A grisly omen that served as a caution to all. Here there are savage things contained within the walls, and also guarding them at the gates.

Through the short shadow of the arch they come through into the wide clear of the courtyard where numerous people in scarlet and white livery are stood in rows. Rows upon rows. Too many to count. The staff all waiting to meet the new Lady of Ranlor.

That knot in Iris’s stomach is back and it squeezes tight. It lessens lightly on sighting the redoubtable figure of Mrs Jones. His housekeeper from England. Stood at the head of the household gathering. She can exit the carriage going to a friend. That comforts her.

They lurch to a stop. Creaking wheels and shifting ivory horses in their black tacked gear. Iris takes a deep breath. Kylo opens the door and exits first. Strong powerful body thudding down onto the cobbles. She hears his boots crackle on the pavement and gritty gravel underfoot. He smiles up to her and holds out a gloved hand. “My Lady.” He bolsters her with a smouldering smile.

She takes a breath. Let’s the moment settle it’s severity on her shoulders.

And then takes his hand and throws herself into the leap. The fall. Getting - fairly gracefully - out the coach in her simple dress and coat. She smiles at all the faces and eager eyes awaiting her. She was perhaps not what they were expecting. They were readied for a Lady of high rank and snobbery. She sees some eyebrows raise. Some speculatory gossip passed in German into whispers on familiar ears.

She smiles wide as Mrs Jones comes forwards. Looking as pleased as if she was welcoming home her very own children from a long voyage abroad. Her ruddy cheeks and warm smile buttering up her dark eyes. She curtseys to Iris. And she can’t help but want to throw herself on the old woman and give her a stout squeezing hug.

“Your Lordship. Your Ladyship. Welcome home. It is most excellent to see you again.” She says to them both but Kylo knows that former comment is directed towards his wife. Last time she saw Iris she was a frail invalid and a single woman.

“You truly missed me then, Jones?” Kylo smarts with a boyish grin of charm. Folding his arms behind his back and leering at her.

“It’s been remarkably peaceful in your absence. Your lordship.” She insists.

Iris reaches across and holds the old woman’s hand dearly. “It is such a great comfort to see you again. Mrs Jones.” She tells.

“As head housekeeper. Let me introduce you to your staff. Lady Ren.”

“No need for such formality. Mrs Jones. Lady Iris will suffice. I have barely had the time yet to grow used to my married surname.” She insists. Mrs Jones leads her along with a gesturing arm to meet the people gathered to meet her. They all bob a curtsey as she is introduced to each of them in turn.

She meets the kitchen staff. The gardeners. Maids of every rank. Scullery maids, house maids, chamber maids. The footmen and hall boys. The grooms in the stables. From the under butler, right down to the errand boy. She meets them all.

As she’s being introduced to the kitchen girls, one of the footmen, far down the line from where his wife is. Says something in cutting Bavarian under his breath to his friends stood either side of him.

“ _That low born is no more entitled to run this house than I am.”_

Kylo’s eyes snapped across the crowds and sliced straight into the man. Colder and sharper than flint arrowheads. He didn’t recognise this member of staff. He must’ve been newly instated to the household. Hired in Kylo’s absence.

He was dark haired, a handsome sweep of honey-brown hair, with dull eyes and a square jaw. His cocksure stance said he thought a lot of himself. Kylo’s eyes narrow as the errant footman seems to notice. Sheepishly averts his gaze to his feet. Nervous. Slaps the smirk off his face.

Kylo stalks away down the line to where Iris is. Turning his body but his eyes don’t leave the impertinent upstart. Black revolting poison in his lordships eyes serves as a last warning as he crosses to be nearer his wife. That look was a big a warning as anything a furious mortal could muster.

He should be careful incurring Kylo’s wrath. It’s not a flimsy temper. It’s one of his nastiest and most potent. Iris looks back over her shoulder for a second and wonders why kylo is staring like stone cold death at some poor soul over his shoulder. She puts that aside to ask him about it later.

A little flurry of footsteps clatter into the stone courtyard. Stealing everyone’s attentions. Iris looks back once more to see a little white blur dart and crash into Kylo’s tree trunk legs. Skinny ivory coated small twiggy arms try and squeeze him into a hug. Iris sees it’s a little boy.

He has shaggy black hair, blacker than ink. Bronze skin and a gap toothed little grin. He steps back and she recognises something in those walnut brown child eyes of his. They remind her of Jomar. His warm burnt almond eyes. And how they gaze in kindness and glimmer in his sharp wit.

Kylo ruffled his head before sinking down to a crouch to be at the boys level. Iris can see his clothing is rich and adhered strictly to his native country. He’s wearing a tiny version of the long tunic shirts she’s seen Jomar wear. Little puffed trousers and pointed mule slippers on his feet.

His small coat is a stunning ivory white stitched with navy dashed patterns. His trousers are a wheaten gold and his shoes are a rusty red. Well worn. It speaks of his energy. Running around Ranlor so much had worn his shoes down.

She watches her husband reach into his coat pocket and rummage for something. On one of his knees, the other bent behind him as he talks to the lad. He brings something out his pocket and Iris sees, nestled there among the lint and the coins in his palm, a bright blue feather. Theres a speckled stripy rust and browned one, and another grey one spattered with white dots.

Iris liked that he had this secret collection in odes for someone else. Safely stowed in his pocket.

“I found these in the woods in England. And I thought a budding young ornithologist back home would like use of them.” Kylo’s smiling warmly as he curls them all into the child’s palm.

He says something to Kylo in a language that sounded exotic and masterful. Kylo says something back with that same pleased smile. A language with flowery pronunciation and not all severe like the Russian he spoke on board ship to that dowager.

The staff start to shift away. Crowds trickling back into the entryway. Mrs Jones stays out to guide them in. Tells Iris she’ll be up later with her maid to help see to her dress her for dinner.

Iris walks and puts her hand on her husbands shoulder. The little boy smiles up at her. Showing her the gaps in his smile.

“And who might this especially handsome young man be?” She asks. Already having a decent sense of who he is.

The little boy proudly tells her. Steps forward and plucks her hand into his little grasp and shakes it fondly. When he spoke, though his voice was childish and light. He still bore that same trace of an Indian cadence.

“My name is Ravi Kavuri Chandra Jomar. It is very nice to meet you. My Lady.”

Kylo clears his throat with a warm smile aimed his way. The boy steps back and performs a very deep, very wobbly bow.

“My father is the butler to Lord Ren. My Lady.” He explains proudly. Iris comes to a crouch too. Kneeling down to be at Ravi’s eye level.

“I’ve met your father. And I like him very very much. So I’m certain in time we shall be good friends too, if you should like.” Iris predicts.

She doesn’t see any sense in talking down to children. They had a complex working brain. She doesn’t see why she should patronise them. They have hobbies and interests and likes and fears. Same as any adult. They’re not just some flea to be swatted away or dismissed. Or tidied away into the nursery.

Ravi shifts. Holding his hands nervously behind his back. “He didn’t tell me you were so nice. You’re much nicer than him.” He nods towards Kylo who narrows his eyes. Raises a sardonic brow. Iris laughs.

“Run along now. You littlest vexation. Go and get up to your usual mischief before your _pita_ gets home.” He commands. Rising to a stand once more.

Young master Ravi exits with another bow to Iris and sticking his tongue out at Lord Ren. Iris laughs as he scarpers back into the house just as quickly as he had come.

“He’s sweet.” Iris laughs when they’re alone again.

“The sweetness will wear off.” Kylo warns. “But for the most part he is a charming boy. Jomar has raised him well. He’ll make a fine butler to me someday.”

“They are tenants here?” Iris asks.

“I gave them use of a cottage if they wanted it, but they live in the castle. I’ve seen to a tutor for Ravi and when he’s old enough for school he can go to any one he wishes.” Kylo tells.

“Is Mrs Jomar here too? I’d adore to meet her.” Iris could picture an elegant Indian woman dressed in bright bright silks contrasting to her beautiful bronzed skin. Hair as thick and as dark as black hay. Eyes exactly like the warm, openly honest ones of her son and husband.

“Sadly, she died not long after Ravi was born. Seven years back now.” Kylo explained.

“That’s awful.” She frowns. Feeling the tragedy and loss in his voice. She was obviously a beloved wife and mother.

“You helped Jomar in raising him, schooling him” Iris states.

“As was my duty.” Kylo states. “Any man would have done the same thing.”

“I assure you. Most men would not have.” Iris smiles in mindful kindness. She reaches out and holds his hand.

“That boy simply worships you.” She reveals to him. She could tell so already. Kylo shrugs.

“He’ll be back to his old tricks of hiding toads in the maids shoes and stealing a jar of jam when cook isn’t looking.” He promises.

“... and I bet you let him get away with such antics..” She supposes.

“I did make him personally remove the toads but in all other accusations I remain a stoutly innocent party.” He assures.

She cranes her neck up to look at the vast courtyard. Stone grey and windows tower high around them. Grand imperial stairs with stone columns leading up to the stately tall front doors. Tall and white and the glass windows shine. Kylo backs away to them with a cunning smile and his hands behind his back.

“Might I interest you in the royal tour my lady?” He smirks.

“You better had. If I get lost there’s a danger I could wander unseen for weeks.”

She and Kylo alight the split imperial stairs She holds her skirts aloft and steps up. Kylo opens the door wide for her. “I can’t have my dearest love getting lost. Not on the first day.” He smirks.

“And don’t think you can pull a trick and lead me into the bowels of the castle and lock me away in the dungeons.” She warns. Pointing an all knowing, wifely finger at him.

He looks amused and his eyes sparkle with lust and mirth.

“What a pity... the wailing ghouls would love a new pretty face to talk to.” He japes. She laughs.

She puts a hand to that wide chest. Leans in and gives him a sweet peck on the lips. Before she steps in the doorway. Passes the threshold to her new home.

Her feet pause on the very fine marble tiles two metres shy of the doorway she’s just passed through. Heels of her slippers clacking softly on the tiles that ebbed out for miles around, like a calm sea reflecting the white sun.

Her eyes are wide as saucers. Kylo shuts the door behind her and steps up to catch her expression. Smirks at her awed earnest face.

The marble and black tiles, gleaming like mirrors under her toes, stretch out straight to spill across the floor. Leading up to a staircase to rival something fine as Versailles, she’s sure.

Circular beige stone steps ripple outwards from another imperial staircase. Black and gold banister coiled into a curl at the base of the, once again, imperial stairs that run up the baroque gilded walls along this entryway.

“Oh Kylo.” She sighs completely lost on the sight of it. Clearly whomever designed this foyer did so for the purpose of entertaining. To dazzle the guests who’d step out of doors into this castle for a banquet and a ball. Out of the blackest velvet night strung with stars and into the hospitality of these stone halls with blazing fires.

She steps forwards. Enchanted. Dazed. Kylo takes her hand as she scans the walls all around her. Painted with italian style rusty columns and pale flaking frescoes of some Venetian inspired garden. Cyprus trees and orderly lakes in the views. And then a frolicking hunt spreading up the walls in chalky paint. Stags followed by hounds and horses and hunters. Dark and medieval in design.

Everywhere is light. She didn’t expect this from a castle. She expected harshly dark stone walls and restricted light shining from tiny squat crossed lead windows. Clearly this castle is a different breed.

A big wall of Georgian arches meet them at the top of the stairs. It leads into another circular room, an anteroom with a domed ceiling for the main ballroom. The walls lined with crackled columns of wheat marble, lined with chairs or stiff white stone statues. Candle votives and chandeliers stood everywhere.

Iris is stood craning her neck upwards so much. Kylo’s worries she’ll develop a crick in her neck. He chuckles and crosses past her to the double doors in this round anteroom. “Nothing compared to the grand ballroom.” He promises. Throwing open the doors.

“If I faint...” Iris jokes, dazzled, as she steps past him into the biggest room of the castle.

“I’ll catch you. And yell timber.” He smirks.

This room was designed to stun. High ceilings and chandeliers and and frescoes on the ceiling and gold. So so much gold and crystal. Beige walls with high windows.

Half moon balconies of stone spill off some of the windows, an entire wall of floor to ceiling windows to her right. Showing a stunning vista of the forest. Gathered around green for miles under a thick grey sky. Mist ebbs at the horizon. The promise of more snow looms. Tips of the trees and the rocks of the mountain make for a sheerly terrifying drop down from the stone balconies.

At the end of the room there’s a stone fireplace sunk into the wall that’s as tall as her towering husband is and at lest several feet long. Logs blaze within the great big open basket. She can see this would be the place where Kylo gathers his tenants for balls each year in gratitude.

Fire roaring. Snow heaped at the windows. Serving them a banquet and brandy punch on long the table pushed to the far wall. Holly and greenery and garlands hung everywhere for Yuletide, and the room absolutely dripping gold for their guests. No matter who they might be. The lowliest farmer or tenant. Kylo would show appreciation for all.

At the end of the ballroom, either side of the fireplace, sits a twin set of double doors leading into a furnished parlour. Another small balcony leading off the smaller darker room.

“Back through the anteroom is the dining room. That looks over the courtyard. That’s where we’ll dine or breakfast most days.” He tells her as she stands admiring the view of the forest.

“You could take a tray in bed now you’re a married woman.” He smiles slyly.

“I just might do that.” Iris smirks sunnily. A lifetime of toil and she thinks how nice it will be to slip into the very fine silk slippers of a lady of leisure. Sleep in til just shy of nine o’clock. Take breakfast in bed. Rise and take a rose petal and lavender strewn bath and lounge in her boudoir taking callers. She’s suddenly eager with anticipation of a relaxing life. It’s quite a liberating thought.

A scuffle of claws on the tiles suddenly spurs in their direction. Iris turns back to the anteroom to see the open doorway entirely taken up by large shaggy hounds. Three quick blurs of wiry haired Irish wolfhounds and two enormous Great Danes lumber into the room. Tails wagging. Tongues lolling. Barking and panting in search of their long lost master.

They clamour at Kylo’s knees and he drops down to fuss them. Ruffles their ears. Dodges kisses and leaps as they nuzzle their noses into his coat and smell the unfamiliar scent of travel and sea air woven into his clothes. So many big dogs they could tackle him to the ground with one knock of their huge heads.

Hurried footsteps clatter in through the anteroom and an out of breath servant staggers and slows in the doorway and begins to apologise. Sweat on his brow. His clothing askew. He tries to hide his exertion from his Lordship. Wincing only apology that the hounds broke loose.

Kylo soothes the man with a smiling comment. Dodging where one of the dogs tried to snuffle and lick his ear. Kylo turned his head and looked at the dog who seemed not the least bit sorry. Merely wagged it’s tail and prevailed in its quest to try and lick his masters big nose.

Iris smiles as amongst the blur of big paws and shaggy fur bombarding Kylo. One little dog broke away to waddle over to her. She smiled and crouched as a particularly tubby beagle dog with a grey chin and floppy ears came over to her and lapped up their fusses she crouched to give.

“Hello, you.” She smiles. The beagle shuts its eyes and pants as she tickles its chin.

Kylo smiles as he scratches one of the wolfhounds ears. “That’s Theron. We tell him he’s a hunting dog. Even though quite obviously he’s not in his....prime.” Kylo lies.

This dog was out of shape and far too short to be a hunting dog capable of helping his master take down a boar or hunt for deer. But he was loud in howl and fiesty as any mongrel. Iris loves the fact that everyone lies to the this scruffy dog to make him believe he was one amongst his peers. Despite being laughably smaller than the dogs that would come up to her middle.

Kylo starts pointing to the dogs gathered about him. “This is Caligula, Zeus, Cerberus, Titus, Horus, and Brutus.” He introduces. Some of them lumber over to Iris who pays them in turn. Seeing their names stamped into their brown leather collars.

Their tails all wag with their mentioned names. Caligula and Cerberus were two ginormous black Great Danes with deep black eyes to match their gleaming velvet coats, and the rest were huge lumbering shaggy wolfhounds with whisky-yellow eyes standing out from their cloudy grey wiry fur.

“My hunting dogs.” Kylo adds.

“You hunt often?” She asks. As Cerberus tries nuzzling into her armpit and Brutus attempts to lick her chin.

“Maybe once a week. Maybe more if my tenants invite me to ride out with them.” He tells.

Iris stands and brushes the dogs look up at her keenly. Smelling the new strangers skirts and shoes.

“I let them in the castle but if they bother you with their barking or dog hairs shedding everywhere, I can have them confined to their kennels.” He offers. Helping stroke wiry dog hairs off her skirt. Purposefully brushing her thigh slowly. Thank goodness the servant had retired to catch his breath.

“I don’t mind dogs at all. In fact they are excellent company.” She smiles. Laughing as her arm was hanging loose, but one of the grey shaggy hounds kept jutting his head under her palm for more strokes.

Iris likes how he didn’t brutalise his hunting dogs. Keeping them as wild feral beasts locked up in chains. Only releasing them when the hunt was afoot. He probably shares his warm half with them. Gives them the bones from his meat, the crusts from his table.

Kylo smiles at her. Before he turns and gives the dogs a sharp whistle. Saying something in a cutting german command. They obediently turned on their heels and bolted for the door. Theron bringing up the rear in a slow waddle. Tail wagging after his sprinting friends. Letting out a particularly tone-deaf howl as he advanced after them.

“He certainly has spirit.” She insists with a face that told him how heartened she was by keeping him a hunting dog even though he was nothing of the sort.

“His litter was abandoned in my woods when he was pup. The rest perished but he survived. He’s a plucky little thing. Can’t howl to save his life but he’s a ringmaster around those big dogs.” He insists.

“You rescue abandoned dogs. And care after motherless children. Lord Ren. Under that cold marble outer exterior I believe you to be all mush.” She decides. Reaching out to take his hand.

He chuckles. “That stays between you and me, wife. I have a scary reputation to upkeep you know.” He tells.

“Of course.” She says. Not looking like she really believes him at all. He may like to think himself cold and distances and uncaring for humans. Funnily enough, all the humans around him would comment how well they are treated. How fondly he acts.

He may not be human; but his facade of acting as if he is one, is utterly convincing.

“Come on. Before it gets dark you still have half this castle to see.” He insists. Pulling her along by the hand.

“Where to now? Have you a room with injured kittens that you also care for?” She seeks.

He shoots her a look. A look that told her she may regret those words later.

He says nothing and leads her to a doorway off the ballroom, into a cosy hallway lined with empty suits of armour, guarding the walls and the blood red carpet floor, stood holding lances or maces and swords as long and thick as Iris’s arm. He walks her through to a smaller marble carpeted staircase that leads up into the more private rooms of the castle. Bedrooms and suites.

A lot of the castle was shut up. Rooms with their windows shuttered and sheets thrown over everything within. To stop the sun bleaching and the years worth of thick layers of dust ruining the fine antique furniture.

He’d have Jones open more rooms for Iris to explore. When it was just him in residence. It seemed a waste to have every huge room open. It was more work than benefit. He had a lot of rooms shut away and boarded up. A lot of them for more emotional reasons than he’d dare admit too.

He leads her to the bedchamber they’ll share. His, for now. There’s an adjoining chamber that’s intended to be shared between a Lord and his Lady. Iris knows she won’t have much use of it. Save for a dressing room and a bathroom perhaps. They’ll share a bed. He’s damned if they won’t.

It’s such a stunning room. The ladies suite. All decorated in soft blues and creams. The views are incomparable. It’s stuffed with a huge canopy bed in indigo silk. Bed draped in crushed navy blue velvet with big fat pillows stitched in gold scallop edge stitch. There’s a chaise by the window. One at the end of the bed. Delicate French end tables and dressers. The carpet is a spotless fluffy cream. And red plump roses are crammed into antique vases on the bedside tables.

“These rooms are for your particular use.” Kylo explained. “Though I hope you make very little use of the bed.” He adds wickedly.

She blushes and chides him. Hyper aware if there was some silent maid along the corridor to overhear him.

“Where are your rooms?” She asks him. He nods across by the balcony window. “Through that door.” He answers.

She crosses to the door and pushes it open. Eager to see the room he called his own. It opened onto a very decadent sitting room. Chairs and settees gathered around a fire. Every surface polished. Every pillow plumped. This room is doubtlessly his. Red and gold accent splash across every part of it. Parquet wood floors. Crimson drapes. Fire glowing and popping in the ornate hearth. Expensive Aubusson rugs pasted to the floors like some afterthought of luxury. She’s sure she saw one of those riches in every room she’s glimpsed so far.

She walks through the sitting room and comes into the bedchamber fit for a Lord. Dark wainscoting on the stone walls. A balcony opposite the canopy bed that faces the large fireplace. The heavy silks at all four corners of the posters is dazzling. Vines and flowers on the heavy brocade fabric. Every colour of red she could imagine. Crimson, gold, amber, russet and garnet. Dripping gold fringe down to the big wide mattress.

The bed is monstrously huge. Finely dressed in crisp sheets and then a deep rose red eiderdown. Velvet on top of that. Pillows snow white and plump at the impressive carved mahogany headboard.

It’s all very masculine and she can see his touches in this chamber. The dark wood floors and the richly carved bed. And he had opted for bare stone walls in here and his sitting room. The rest of the bedchambers were painted and some were plastered. This room stripped back to the castles medieval roots.

There’s one armchair and a grey wolf pelt stretched out on the wood floor by the fireside. There’s a collection of books and two candlesticks shelved on the mantel. She admires that plain simplicity of character. He need only a fire to warm by. A book to read. And a place to rest his head. And he was contented.

He’s leaning like a dark tall pillar against the doorway watching her. “You can redecorate if you want. I don’t care about the room I sleep in. As long as it’s next to you.” He offers.

She shakes her head. Smiling. Announcing proudly. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“I like an amenable woman.” He smirks. Reeling her close by the waist to kiss her temple. She cuddles into his chest.

“Your room is lovely and I can’t wait to share our bed. Dear husband.” She smiles. Laying her head on his chest.

“It is a great comfortable bed. I’ve missed it dearly.” He Insists.

He’s slept on cold wood floors. Church stone crypts in the freezing cold of winter. He’s bedded down in leaking barns amongst reeling farmyard animals and bunked down on snowy mushy forest floors around a ember spitting campfire. Listening to the crude scratchings and snorings of his fellow kin.

Nothing is comparable to sleeping next to his wife. Nothing can rival that meagre pleasure.

“Would you like to see the library?” He asks. She leans up on tiptoes and kisses him hard. He’s caught off guard. Stumbled into her. Cupping her neck.

“You might just be the perfect husband. Lord Ren.” She smiles.

“Might?” He crooks a dangerous inky brow down at her.

“Depends entirely on the size of your book room.” She continues.

“I may not be in viking times. Sweet dove. Don’t think that won’t stop me throwing you over my shoulder like a sack of oats to take you to bed after supper tonight for all the cheek.” He pinches her ass as she follows ahead of him. She squeaks and jolts in surprise.

He gives her a tour of Ranlors absolutely perfectly sized library. And then takes her down to see the Dutch tulip gardens and the tea rose gardens. Theres even a box maze. The gardens are so transformative to their surroundings, she’s in danger of thinking she was wandering in the potagerie suite of a French Château. Frolicking fountains and stone benches.

And they don’t walk far enough to see it but he tells her beyond the gate at the end of the property border, that there’s a big wild pond surrounded by weeping willows draping in the water. A mossy stone gazebo is perched on the edge of the lake. A garden lost to time and full of beauty. He let the gardener keep it mildly tended. Let the wilderness consume it.

He shows her the back of the enormous walled kitchen gardens that his scottish cook, the no nonsense Mrs McTavish, was enormously proud of. The gardens are truly beautiful. Bordered by neat trimmed evergreen hedges and then in the distance the black wilderness of the wicked dark forest takes over. Twilight is starting to ebb in across that sky. Distant bruisings of a night sky settle on the woods beyond.

Kylo shows her back to their rooms. Where their trunks have been unloaded. Maids bustle in the anteroom, and a bath filled with steamy water, dried lavender and rose petals awaits her Ladyship. Kylo leaves her to go to his own washroom and waiting valet. Telling Mrs Jones with a wink to lay out the dress and jewels on the bed for her.

Before Iris can ask. She’s whisked away to a piping hot bath with a sheet thrown over the scalding copper.

Mrs Jones and the head ladies maid, a lovely polite french girl, Rose, are awaiting to help her bathe. To comb and wash her hair. To brush it out and rub it dry whilst she sits by the fire. They slip her into a new cotton chemise, silk stockings and a new set of very fancy stays with pink ribbons.

She felt unused to such attentions. At home she is usually the one getting ready with the scantest offerance of help from the maids at home. Mainly because Flora and Posy demanded their time more - and also because Iris had been more independent. Relying on no one but herself.

Her hands kept itching to help as Rose and Mrs Jones helped dress her. She was now at her vanity dresser in the Duchesses suite - it’s name apparantly. Her personal maid, Rose, stood behind her. Tending her now dry washed hair into the most artful chignon Iris has ever seen. No more scraggly snippets of muslin to tie back her flyaways. She had married into better things.

She watches Rose in the mirror as they converse. She was beautiful waify girl. Pale skin and dark soulful eyes with perfectly shaped eyebrows and raven hair. She was only twenty and has trained as a ladies maid at an excellent compartment school just outside Paris. Iris enjoys talking to her. She enjoyed even more the luxury of having a hot bath after days of being on board ship with a barely cursory rub down in freezing bucket of water.

When her hair is done, Iris is almost too afraid to touch it. It looks so beautiful and artfully done. Mrs Jones walks across from the wardrobe with a dress for Iris. A silk dress. Iris’s face was a picture as she stood there in her stockings and chemise.

Mrs Jones smiles cunningly and explains. “His Lordship gave me your measurements back in England before we left. He asked me to have the dressmaker in town run up a few silk occasion dresses For you to have here. He said he’ll have him revisit once you were in residence, My Lady. So you may choose some more fashions.”

The dress she’d selected was a beautiful cream silk. No ruffles on the hem and no decoration at the bust. It skimmed her shoulders and showed her neck off beautifully. Three quarter sleeves trimmed with off white Belgian lace. The back gathered into artfully stitched vertical folds. Neckline scooping just above her shoulders. The tone just rich enough to bring out her pale skin and compliment her hair.

When it’s laced, Iris examines herself in the mirror. She can’t quite believe this woman is her. Such a rich dress. Finely pinned hair. Silver pins with roses glimmer out the muddy tumble of her sleekly arranged hair. Florals and scent pouring off her like a cloud. The perfume on the vanity dresser she swears was ambrosia. It smelt like pears and geraniums and every sweet hint of spring. The curvy-fat teardrop glass bottle sat shining, and honey perfume inside, was glimmering on the vanity chest, flickering with firelight.

She can’t believe is all hers. She has to school herself in a very different way of thinking now.

Laid out by the fine gold and silver hair pins. Her worn silver hair brush looks scruffy amongst the fine things. She was going to select some earrings. Kylo had Mrs Jones bring down some of the family jewels from the crammed chests in the attic. Her eyes were spoilt for choice catching on the pearls and gold and diamonds winking up at her from the vanity surface.

“Goodness.” Iris supposed she’ll have to choose a pair. “I wouldn’t have thought he has such fine taste in jewels.” She remarks.

The door creaks. “I’ve heard he has the finest eye for pretty jewels this side of the English Channel.” Comes a deep interjection from the door. The ladies within all jump at his sudden voice. As he looms there, fully washed and dressed in his dark glory.

“Might I beg for a moment of privacy with my wife?” He asks to the servants. Rose curtseys to her as she leaves and Mrs Jones ushers her out the room. Kylo steps aside and sweeps in after they leave.

His eyes warm her better than the fires flames do. “I can’t believe what an enchanting woman I married.” He sighs happily. Hands curved behind his back.

“Mrs Jones certainly has an eye for silk.” Iris remarks. Lifting her skirts and crossing to her husband.

“It’s the woman _in_ the dress who makes it so enchanting. Not the other way around.” He assures.

Slinking close and kissing her temple. Careful not to muss her hair. A waft of clean cotton, rich wool and his juicy blackberry and pine cologne comes after his nearness. It makes her stomach flip in yearning for him. When here he is right in front of her. He’s in all black with a wine red cravat. His usual shadows and blood look.

And she looks like a beam of sun. Or a clutch of white silky roses. Doves feathers. She just needed a little something...

“Spin.” He commands with a gleeful grin. She turns slowly to face the long oval mirror across the room. Positioned by the floral decorated screen in the corner.

His arms encircle over her bust. Holding something to hang and glimmer in her eyeline. A thin wheaten gold necklace. A fat little droplet of a red ruby being the crowning jewel.

“It’s beautiful.” She comments as he lets it rest on her neck. A little drop of suspended blood heading down her collarbone. The perfect touch to go with her cream dress. He does the latch and leans to join her reflection in the mirror as she touches the little jewel.

“I bought it back in Scotland. Thought I’d save it to give you on our first night at Ranlor. The colours of my house crest. Red and gold.” He says simply, smiling all for her.

“It’s lovely.” She insists. She wasn’t one for mountains of jewels and trims. Kylo quite agrees. Diamonds would envy the striking finery of her beauty. That doesn’t mean he won’t stop lavishing her in them. He’s a whole attic stuffed with family jewels. And now he was an exquisite wife he wants to see showing them off.

He’ll have her dripping diamonds and silks for dinner every night because he’ll adore stripping her of them when they retire to bed and seeing her barest beauty shine forth.

“Hungry my sweet? I don’t know about you but I could eat a horse.” He offers as he takes her arm and leads her out the room.

“As long as you haven’t followed through in your promise to give Erland to the butcher.”

Kylo scoffs. “Each day that thought gets more tempting.” He growls.

“You leave my horse be.” She frowns. That crinkled lighthearted annoyance in her brow makes him smile. He is her bloody horse now. That foolish beast had made it quite plain how much he preferred his wife to him.

The castle is doubly enchanting at night. Cloaked in shadow and under the light of sprinkled pearly stars in the heavens. It doesn’t feel any less beautiful. Candles shine on the walls and off the dressers and side tables. Man and wife move quietly through the historic proud halls.

They come down the stairs to the suit of armour corridor, arm in arm, coming to the ballroom and then the anteroom that will lead them to the long impressive dining room which is equally as impressive as the ballroom.

Medieval exposed stone on the walls with dark walnut wainscoting. Here more swords and suits of armour decorate the walls. Flying buttress stone and wood beams exposed high above the table. Candle chandeliers sway above the mile long table.

A masterpiece of a carved stone fireplace is the other end of the room. Logs roaring in the huge iron grate. the large stone half is surrounded by dainty red curves back settees and chairs placed in a gaggle around the fire. The fabric spun to Phoenix red and crushed orange gold on the shimmering white tile floor. Two lazy wolfhounds soak up the heat of the fire. Laying on shaggy cloud grey wild wolf pelts stretched across the floor. The dogs tails thump lazily on the cold stone when Kylo and Iris enter.

Jomar is lighting the candles on the table with a long match when the newlyweds enter. Changed from earlier. Now their excellent butler is clad in a dark navy tunic with a moss green Dastar around his head. Fastidious in his appearance. Always groomed and polished and pressed in bright silks. Proud to represent the house he served. His Lady and his Lord.

Iris smiles warmly at him as they approach. He smiles back at the two of them. Eyes crease and their warm depths could rival the warmest richest cocoa.

“Good evening. My Lord. Lady Iris.” He bows to them both.

“The table looks beautiful. Jomar.” Iris tells him. He went to the hard work of laying it for them and she was letting him know that she appreciates such effort.

A silver service glimmers wickedly proud for the both of them. Every piece of silverware and the crystal glasses absolutely sparkle in the light. A silver platter of dark plums, pomegranates and red grapes laid out like an opulent offering by the settings.

“He measures the placement of the silverware and glasses with a ruler. I’ve watched him.” Kylo whispers as he lets go of her arm. Jomar stands behind her chair and lifts it back for her.

She settles down into it with a smile. “Well. I think that’s awfully efficient. You should be proud of having such a meticulous Butler my love.” Iris insists as she folds her napkin across her silken lap.

Jomar looks smug and kylo glares at him from opposite.

Jomar chuffs am amused chuckle. “I knew I’d like you from the second I saw you. Your ladyship.” Jomar insists as he pours them each some water from a silver jug.

“I’d have thrown over Mrs Simpson in a trice for a Butler as experienced and excellent as you, Jomar.” Iris insists.

“He’s insufferable enough. Must you fight his battles for him?” Kylo asks her, grumping, as he pours the wine.

“Someone must. After all he’s my butler now too.” Iris stubbornly insists. Jomar chuckles.

“What fury have I unleashed...” Kylo remarks to himself.

“You’ve got yourself a wife. Sweet husband. Be prepared to be countermanded more often. And be nicer to my staff. Jomar, how would you like a raise?” Iris begins. Their butler chuckles.

“Traitors. Traitors everywhere...” He mumbles to himself.

Kylo shoots that warning glare again. But nothing on this earth could diminish his wife or Jomar’s mirth. His grumpiness signals to the footman across the room that they are ready to dine.

Out comes the food in an excellent array of Bavarian specialties. The first course is a leek and cabbage soup that Kylo doesn’t partake in. The bread offered with it is dark and dense rye sourdough with cakes and cakes of yellow salted butter. It’s extremely good and much a change from the bread stuff of her home country. Better, in her view.

The second course is a Bavarian pot roast that he absolutely does indulge in. Tender meat with a rich gravy served with seared cabbages, onions, peas and baby carrots. It’s delicious and they eat it up greedily with lots of the fine red Jomar had opened for them. A vintage year to celebrate their first meal at Ranlor. Dornfelder grape. It tastes of spicy ripe plums and prunes.

Pudding is an iced brandy syllabub with Bavarian cream and plump and dark sweet cherries. And a whole platter of chocolate and vanilla buns. Swirled together. Marble cakes dusted with cinnamon sugar. She eats three and then resists from any more. Or she’d become known as the plump Lady of Ranlor castle.

They retire fireside to finish the last of the wine. Kylo stretched out on the settee and yanks her across his lap. Kissing her fingers and her wedding ring, and not caring one iota that the servants see them as they clear away the diner service. He holds her in his lap and they shut their eyes and cuddle together by the fire.

She asks him to tell her one of his stories. Any story. He stands his wine down and strokes along her thighs with his big hands as he tells her about the time he first went to Italy. Told her of the colours of the biscuit and red buildings. Of the romance and the language and the masters of the arts. The clear clear green of the Arno river. The sumptuousness of the clothes and the medieval way of life.

She lays her head close to his on the back of the settee as they sit and talk. The fire bidding them to sleep as the solid weight of food presses upon their bellies. Lulling them to rest. Kylo can’t resist leaning close and kissing the cold drop of blood circled in suspended gold around her neck. She sighs for him. Asking if they can go to bed. He traps her in a sultry kiss for that request.

The sultriness doesn’t end in the dining room. It follows them to their bedroom. Right into their bed.

It’s there as they dismiss all the maids and valets and undress each other themselves. He grasps her close when she’s naked. Tugs her little body into his chest. She slides her fingers into his hair as he starts his military offensive campaign of covering her in kisses.

Snatching her away up in his arms to carry her to bed and leaving their finery, silk and wool, heaped on the floor.

Their bodies enveloped under the bright tulip red covers, they christen Kylo’s Lordly bed with their sweat and their kisses and love. Bodies joining together in hot wet bliss. He holds himself above her as he thrusts and fucks her slowly, powerfully into the big fluffy mattress.

She kept the necklace on. He kisses around that ruby red drop. Puffs out how much he loves her as he leans on his elbows and kisses her as he fucks into his wife’s beautiful sweet hot cunt. Snapping their hips together. Liquid slurping of bodies meeting.

Sweat slicked chests kissing together. Hungry mouthed and eager tongues find each other. She claws his shoulders and looks deep in his eyes as he fills her with his seed for the second time.

Gasping and writhing his love for her as he ruts her again. Smiling into her sweaty neck as he hears her heart burst in his ears, her falling into rapture with his name on her rosy lips that he’s sucked raw. Sheathing his cock in her tight heat again. Feeling the both of them stain her thighs. Spice of sweat clouding the air.

She crosses her legs around his hips under the bloodied rust covers as he shudders another load of spurting cum deep in her. She rakes his shoulder and he calls out for god through grit teeth. Though worshipping gods couldn’t feel anywhere as divine as this woman wrapped around him body and soul.

He fucks her like the devil and cries out how heavenly she feels.

He pants and slanted his chin into her neck. His back clutched into the circle of her shaking sleepy arms. Their sighs and sweaty skin melts into each other.

“My sweet dove.” He smiles as he kisses her shoulder. His love. His Lady. He sighs her name and his bliss over and over. Sticky from fucking and the roaring fire eating crimson gold at the end of their bed.

He listens to the flames, and her groans. And smiles all the more to make out the sound of the wolves outside the castle walls as their howls pierce the velvet black sky in an entirely different sort of worship to the watchful moon.

~

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you lovely lot made of this ❣️


	23. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 👀👀 things may get spooky and hot. Idk. Depends on your take of it...

When Iris woke up the next morning, it was to the sight of her new home, entirely blanketed in white. Blotted all over the tree tops.

The bustling of a quiet chamber maid woke her. She padded in the room silently and lit the fire. The churning orange flame and the crackle of it eating through the wood was what woke Iris.

Through sleep blurred eyes and obscured by the scarlet and gold silk hangings of the bed.

She raises her head off the crumpling feather pillow and squints very un-prettily over in the general vicinity of the maid. Watches her put the moss and flint away in her pail bucket. “Good morning my lady.” She nods sweetly before smiling and ducking out the room.

Iris blinks peering over at her husband who slumbered deeply on the pillow opposite. Sitting up she drags a hand through her hair. Her cotton dress skims off one shoulder, whispering against her skin as she moved. She’d tugged it in after their amour last night.

Her arms get cold in her sleep. Kylo always seemed to sense it. Wraps her up snug in his chest and keeps her captive and plied with kisses.

She turns and admires her husband. He truly was a big wedge of a warrior body turned towards her. Bare chested. She watches his ribs rise and fall softly. His solid arm clutching over the covers at his thick set waist. Inky hair swirled around his head sunken into his own pillow.

His huge body pasted under the covers. Red blood and icy snow sheets covering him. She kisses the side of his cut glass sharp jaw. He grumbles something and his arm flails for her, but she’s already slid out of bed.

She’s grateful for the amber warmth of the fire seeping it’s leeching heat into her skin. Warming up the exposed stone room. It had been muggy last night - the air had been spiced with sweat, moans and muggy heat from gasping mouths. Now that lust and bliss of scorching bodies, had dissipated. And coldness hardened the bedchamber over night as frost crawled up the walls.

Iris warms by the fire, idling for a moment. Before she crosses to the window to take a peek of the view that astounds her still. Thick acres of pine forest stab up from the earth like giants. When she gets to the window, she smears the condensation of cold away with her hand. Pins of shrieking cold on her skin as she looks at the completely snowed over landscape.

White snow blotted and muffled and sifted damp and heavy on everything in sight. Weighting down the giants that were the trees. Lashed onto every bark and heaped on the forest floor. Frost sneaking into every nook and cranny of that forest. Hiding under every leaf. Snuck under the ground and curled at the roots.

It was snowing still. And it must have been slowly shifting down its white petals all night. The forest floor is thick with it. She’s keen to explore every part of this castle. And now she’s hankering to find the stables and take Erland for a ride through the quaint forest in all its snow and glory. See just how far the castle boundary’s stretched for.

Another grumble comes across from the bed. Slithering out from the silk drapes that obscured the occupants.

“Dove?” Grumbles her sleepy husband. She hears the rasp of his hands searching across the covers. Seeking for her in the big big bed. She could roll over twice and not touch her husband. They slept on bolster cushions and feather down and it was like being lulled to sleep in a warm soft lake.

“It’s snowed.” She remarks quietly. Transfixed by the view out of the window. Pulling the heavy rust velvet curtain aside to marvel some more. Frost swirled up the huge windows. Crusted onto the stone balcony outside the window. Stuck on the ledges and clinging on with its icy fingers.

“It snows an awful lot here, my love. You’ll be sick of it after a week.” He promises with a kind smile. Lounging on his back. Hands crossed over his belly, one leg bent and tenting the red covers.

Iris looks out the window with a private smile kept all to herself. “I could never grow sick of this.” She hushes softly.

Kylo grumbles and sits up in bed. The frame creaks under him. He peers through the silk canopies and sees his wife stood there at the white window in a snow drift of awfully thin white cotton draping down her body. He can see the cloudy morning light shining through the milky-gauze cloth of her gown. The shadows of her legs and her hips.

“Get back over here before you freeze. Lady Ren.” He rumbles lowly. Folding open the covers. Not in the habit of being disobeyed.

She doesn’t need much convincing. She folds herself back into the cosy warm bed. She slides into the crush of the red covers and into the enfold of her husbands arms. He groans when she settles there against his cold marble chest. He strokes her hair and lies flat on his back with her curled to his ribs. Hands stroking over his chest.

“I think we should have breakfast together and then I’ll unwillingly tackle the mountain of papers I know will be awaiting my attention on my desk.” He growls. Displeased.

Lordly duties will rob him of a day spent with his Lady. He can just picture the groaning stack of papers waiting to be leafed through by his hands on his desk. Tenants with woes. Taxes, expenses and other such bureaucratic nonsense.

“I can breakfast alone if you need to take care of business matters.” Iris offers to him.

“You’re awfully sweet, dove. But I need to make use of my time with you before Jomar bursts in and starts rabbeting on about my numerous responsibilities.”

The double doors across the room burst open and a brilliantly pressed and wildly animated Butler crosses the threshold of their cosy warm room. Interrupting on the newlyweds solitude and intimacy.

This very snowy morning his dastar is a cool icy silver, shimmering satin like the grey scales of a fish. His coat is a wine-berry red. The usual black boots and puffed trousers - dhoti trousers.

“Good morning. Your lordship. Your ladyship. I trust you slept well.” He enquires kindly. “My lord, Mr. Huber is awaiting on you downstairs. He’s come to talk to you about urgent renovations on his pig farm.” Jomar informs.

Kylo flops back onto his pillow and sighs a grumbling thundering growl. “Tell him I come directly.”

“I’ve given him a tray of tea. Wilton awaits you in the bachelors chamber. I thought a wash and a shave may be prudent before you see any of your tenants.” He tells. Urging kylo as if he were an errant child.

“Yes, dear.” Kylo says with bored sarcasm.

Jomar slides out the room as easily as he came. A pleased smile on his face. The cloud of his mango and coconut perfume lingers as the only trace he was ever there.

“Breakfasts off for you then. You have pig farmers to see.” Iris tells him sunnily.

Kylo heaves out of bed like a recumbent grizzly being forced to emerge from the cosy habitat of its cave in spring. Iris sits up and smiles as he wanders naked for his dressing gown. Admired the furiously large build of him. Pale columns of his thighs. The wide plain of his back. That slashing wolfs claw scar curved over his shoulder. The taut high globes of his ass.

He folds himself into his dressing gown with terse angry short movements. Tying the cord around his broad waist. He looked sleepy and annoyed. Doubtless a good scrub in the bath and a shave would sober him up for his Lordly duties.

He lumbers back across to the bed to snatch a kiss before he had to depart. Leaning over to her with both palms flat on the bed. “There’s a fur lined cloak and wool dress in your wardrobe. If you go out in that snow, I want you snug and warm.” He orders.

She thanks him. Smiles and cups his cheek and kisses him. “Go attend to your people. My Lord. I can amuse myself for the day. I do have a castle to explore.” She insists. Giddy to get going and see more of this marvellous stone relic.

He sinks her into another sultry kiss. Snuffles down onto her shoulder. Kisses the bare skin there where the cotton had slid away.

The door creaks. Kylo turns his head back from where he’s kissing his wife. Jomar is in the doorway looking vexed. He clears his throat and points to the clock on the mantel. Ticking away.

Iris tries not to laugh too much at Jomar’s persistence. And Kylo’s grumpiness.

“If you’ll excuse me I’m going to go and flog a certain butler.” He sighs and stomps off to the door. Edging by his man servant.

Jomar’s giving him a wry look as he disappears, but not without politely folding his arms behind his back and addressing her ladyship.

“Mrs McTavish is laying out breakfast for you downstairs my lady. And Rose is waiting to dress you in the duchess chamber.” He tells.

Iris smiles her thanks. Rising and crossing the room to fetch her gown from the wingback red chair slanted inwards by the fire. The fabric now toasty warm. She slips it on her arms.

“Keep ruling his lordship with a rod of iron Jomar. It’s awfully good for him.” Iris says as she folds her hair out the back of said gown.

Kylo’s growl can be heard ricocheting down the corridor.

Iris ducks away with a smile and skips off to get dressed. Rose already ran a geranium and rose scented bath for her. Studded with actual petals and leaves from the hothouse. Iris makes up her mind to go on a quest for that later.

Rose helped her dress after she dried off. Layering up in thick wool stockings and a sturdy chemise under a teal blue wool dress. She helps Iris arrange her hair into yet another cleverly artful style. Secured it with one of the many silver hair broaches she had to hand. Kylo and his family jewels were liberally lavished on her. Now he did have someone to spend them upon.

Smelling of roses and looking awfully well presented, she navigates her way to the dining room. Feeling like she’d need Ariadne’s string in order to get about. She says a warm hello to the maids and footmen she passes. Dusting or cleaning. Under strict orders from the housekeeper.

They seem surprised she even notices them. The maids curtsey jerkily. Sharing glances as if she was not supposed to take heed of their presence. Clearly they thought Ladies of the gentry would behave differently. Maybe they were used to the rolling storm and shadow that was his Lordships imposing passing presence.

She could imagine Kylo blusters by them like a heavy grey storm loud.

She comes to the echoing grand hall once more. Different in the light of day. The huge wall of arched windows let in the sheer brightness of the fluffy white trees dusted with snow. The fire is warm and crackling. Roaring and eating chunky round logs in the hearth. Sticky green sap and cold forest scent fills the room from the wood caught in the amber blaze.

She walks and walks until she comes to the end of the table. Taken aback when she sees the sheer amount of food in place there. And all for only one person.

A whole dish of hot split top white rolls and toasted bread. Salted butter, a vast array of cheeses and some baked slices of ham. Jams and chutneys. A platter of fresh ripe fruit, strawberries and berries and apples and oranges. There’s a silver pot of tea, and hot chocolate spiced with nutmeg.

There’s some specialties she didn’t recognise that must be Bavarian; boiled eggs in a creamy mustard sauce with fried spinach. Some flat yellow omelette folded in half with fried bits of bacon, onions, and small chopped potatoes with some sweet-nutty cheese sprinkled on top. Browned in the skillet pan.

She pours herself some tea and starts on the Bacon and potato omelette. Watching the snow fall softly down the window outside. She makes light work of breakfast. Thanking the footman who comes to pull out her chair for her. She tells him to relay her thanks to Mrs McTavish for such a fine breakfast.

She gets on with the business of exploring this new home of hers.

She starts near the library Kylo showed her yesterday. Stumbling across empty parlours and grand rooms. She didn’t begin to count the number of rooms this castle might have. She’s on the grand stairs leading to the numerous bedchambers. Maids scurry by every so often. Or footmen finding things to polish.

She wanders in awe.

Iris has so many things to ask Kylo about the architecture. So many things she makes notes of in her head. The Rodinesque statues. The carved marble stairs. The antiques. Every room she comes across is flawless. It’s finery rather dulled by the dustysheets thrown over all the fine furniture. The dimly lit rooms with shutters blocking out the snowy sunlight. Iris finds something sad in the fact he had this big magnificent house and half the rooms are laid up like bandaged invalids. Tucked away and forgotten about.

She supposed the army of scarlet clad house maids in ivory aprons and white caps she encountered milling about were en route to brighten and freshen up these rooms. Under orders of the redoubtable Mrs Jones. Polish the chandeliers. Sweep and beat the dust out of the rugs. Make sure every surface shines like an armful of fat glittering diamonds.

She does pass the housekeeper who bids her a polite good morning. Before turning and ruling her maids with a persevering tongue. And those sharp eyes never missed a thing. Iris felt sorry for the poor quivering girls under her order. Jones could spot a stray speck of dust a mile off.

She quickly wanders off through more rooms. Coming up another set of stairs. This time there are mounted and stuffed animal heads on the wall. Deers and boars mostly.

A stuffed giant white stag guards the landing at the top of the staircase. Such a beautiful creature. It seems a shame to have it prancing in pose for all eternity. Strung up with the medieval swords and shields and animal heads along the walls.

Iris supposed it was not of Kylo’s doing. It may have been here because of the castles previous occupant. He didn’t seem the type to keep macabre trophies. He delights in nature. He doesn’t delight in slaughtering it and thinking of animals as lesser beings.

“You poor thing. Bet you’d rather be prancing about in that snow.” She says.

Iris softly pats the stags nose. It’s glassy eyes fixed on her. Reflecting the snow swirled windows behind it as she turns the split marble carved set of stairs and makes her way up another tiled landing. She could hear the blizzard wind howling at the roof. Breaking open on the stone walls. She made a bet with herself that she was quite high up in the castle now. Judging by the vertiginous view and the sound of the fussing, clamouring winds.

She can see the maids have been up here with their feather dusters and polish. She finds another exquisite sitting room. Opening out onto a large wall of windows and a balcony. This lounge room is draped in accents of soft blues and silvers. Much different to Kylo’s taste, he usually went for dark wine-plum purples, or violent tulip reds and gold. This room almost feels colder and cooler in comparison to the hot blooded taste of Kylo’s warm colours.

There’s so many books too. And there’s a desk. Curious, she walks over to it. There’s quills and papers and diaries scrawled in an elegant hand. Iris doesn’t intrude on the writings subjects. But she admires the artful Inky scrawl of this mystery handwriting. A very elegant hand. There’s something almost medieval about the way they arched the letters.

She pauses and puts down the diary. Leaves it on the dusted table top. She scans the books lining the huge ancient walnut shelves on the walls. She sees the vast array of texts and books. Bound in hard unyielding thick leather and striped with gold. Some of them looked older than this very medieval castle. Some are reeds tied together. Laced with strips of rope or leather.

She leaves the room and walks out. Back onto the landing. The stag still in its poised place. She crosses to the room opposite. Opening the door she discovers its an empty bedchamber. A large one. It smells faintly of jasmine, berries and wood-sage. Enshrined in the same colours. Blues and ornate silvers. Matching the gold baroque trims and scrolls and the moulded white ceiling.

The bed is huge and canopied in blue. Velvet throw and fur pelts line the foot of it. She looks around and the lack of vanity dressers or wardrobes brings her to a murky conclusion.

These were masculine quarters. And this high up in the castle? These are intimate bedchambers.

It feels like she’s stumbling onto scared ground. These rooms belonged to someone. Someone Kylo once loved. She doesn’t feel angry or hurt. Matter of fact she finds herself saddened. Perhaps her husband had these rooms shut up for a reason.

Perhaps it wasn’t merely beneficiary reasons that kept these doors locked away from sight and mind.

She retreats from the space with a pinched expression on her face. She’s sorry she may have intruded on things she had no right to. She shuts the door and strokes the handle almost lovingly. Leaving it as she found it. She turns to go back down the stairs. But another dark door across the way appeals to her.

She walks towards it. Not able to stop herself, something made her walk to it. She cannot be sure what. It whispers her name. Croons for her. Tugs her curious heartstrings into urging.

She opens the shuddering oak door and it grinds against a stone floor. Stairs winding up and up. A tiny arched window is chipped into the thick beige walls. The walls of the stairs are lumpy and bumped with exposed stone.

She’s found the stairs to one of the turrets. They smell of cold musty damp, old wood, and cold dust. She hitched her skirts up and takes the shallow sloping stone steps. Sees where this winding case leads her to.

She comes to the top and there’s yet another door to be pushed open. The stone scrapes against the wood. Catches on the flagstone floor. She peers into the room and now she can see why the one downstairs was utterly empty. No decoration on the walls. No items on the bedside or lurking in the dresser drawer.

Those cherished items were all up here. Tucked under dust sheets as if the snow outside had gotten in somehow, blanketed everything. Made it cold and unloved.

She moves into the small freezing circular room. The very tip top of the winding stairs. Breathless from the steep climb. This room is musty. And hasn’t been touched yet. Judging by the centimetres thick of dust laying atop everything. Mites twirl in the air from the meagre window. This room smells ancient. Feels ancient. Soaked in ancient pain and stored memories.

She moves closer and pushes the door up behind her, to see what these forgotten treasures might be.

She steps to the nearest thing under the sheets. A trunk chest. She slips the sheet back over the lid. Let’s it fall back over the dome of leather. She opens the unlatched trunk and glimpses its contents. She lets out the softest sigh when she does.

Their scent reaches her first. Faded bloom of florals and a lost hint of sage.

It was clothes. Velvet, silks, satins. All in cool icy shades. Silver, blue, a pale green and a cool grey. Like a woodland forest in frost. Like the vista of snow outside. Cold and imposing. Imperious. She reaches across for the velvet. The finest softest grain shes ever felt. Almost like a fur pelt it was so soft. A chilling shade of blue. Like robins eggs, blue dawns, and seawater.

She skims her fingers over the finely textured thread of the stitched florals on the blue velvet robe. Golden suns and leaves and twirling plant vines. It looked medieval in design. She didn’t know any man of this century that dressed in this manner. These are clothes from a time long past.

She shuts the trunk and lifts the sheet over it again. Laying the luxurious clothes to rest. Burying them once more. She walks across to the window, intrigued by the tall bulk stood near it. It’s two heads taller than her and when she peels aside the sheet she can see dulled silver winking back at her. Armour.

She steps back and looks over the hulking impressively tall armour. Stood ghostly and empty without the body it was moulded to fit inside it. She gets an echo of who this person was. They were tall, no mistaking that. Possibly even taller than her husband. And definitely slimmer. Leaner in the shoulders. Tapered at the waist to a trim waistline. She can only judge by the cold measurements of the metal.

Serpents are etched into the armour. Coiling around the chest. Slithering down the shoulders. Wound around the forearms. White on silver. She leaves the armour as she found it. She would hate for something so fine to get ruined.

Another suitcase stacked up reveals more books. Pens, parchment. Quills. Bottles of scent if she’s not mistaken. A silver hair comb.

So this was where Kylo has shut away his past. Locked the door and thrown away the key. Kept it up here in the attics gathering dust. Just like the words he spoke of him. The memories he never relived. They can lay aside where he’s put them many years previous. It hurts her heart to see this sorry gathering of lovely possessions set aside.

But it’s not her love story to infringe upon-

She may be married to Kylo. But that seldom grants her the right to poke around in things he clearly wanted left well enough alone. This is her home but this isn’t a place that she needs to revisit. She turns for the door when one last thing catches her eye.

A painting. Leaning against the door. Gilded frame exposed where the sheet had dragged down. She’s come this far.

She steps across and lifts the dirty smeared cloth off the oil painting that comes to her hip.

It’s slashed. Clawed. Gouged. Iris swallows and tried to make out the features sat on the unfortunately doomed portrait. Though she had a feeling she knew already what she would find.

From Kylo’s descriptions of him. He appeared a tall, pale man. With light eyes and pallid hair. This portrait gives little help in her seeking out his previous lovers likeness. Claws had torn through the canvas. Scratching deep welts into the gold gilded frame. Down on through the oil paints and canvas cloth. Diagonally carving through this figures face.

All she could make out was a slice of icy hair. Light skin and the curved arch of a jawbone. A slim neck and a silver velvet collar. The rest of the painting is lost to Kylo’s violence and temper. It seemed to cement her sadness seeing this. This raw jagged shard of his buried life.

Pain and loss hangs in the air. Bitter. Like the dust that swarms around this little turret room.

She covers the paintings and leaves well enough alone. She pulls the door on the past. Steps down the curling ribbon of the stairs and hitches her skirts to step down the sloping steps. Coming back to the landing and down the split stairs again.

The ghostly white stag judged her with the dark black marbles of its dead eyes. Guilt nibbles at her stomach and she vows to herself to find another piece of the house to explore.

In a way, Kylo was right about the wailing ghouls. Only they didn’t live in the dungeons. They’d been boarded in up here. Crammed into the turrets where they could be silenced.

She comes back into the main hallways that come to the bedchambers and guest suites in the castle. She’s suddenly forgot all her questions she had to ask Kylo. Only the lead heavy weight of her sadness for him is left quaking in her chest. She makes for her dressing room to get her heavy fur lined coat. Maybe a ride out into the snow with Erland would shake it off her mind.

Rattle the questions off the tip of her tongue. Make them fade.

For there was nothing in that attic but ghosts and spectres of demons that she suspects didn’t need reviving.

~

Kylo’s morning wasn’t without ghosts either.

Little glimmers keep trying to take his mind off his task. Jasmine bath salts in the hot water sloshing around his body makes his mind wander. He tells the chamber boy to use something else next time. Sandalwood soap or mint oil. The smell of that sickly blooming jasmine makes him feel sick.

Snow dancing outside the window as he dries off and shaved himself makes him not pay attention. White. Pale. He nicks himself with his razor and watches the soap and blood bloom in the bowl of his water. He dries off his face brusquely. Done with grooming and shaving. Let’s Wilton help him tie his cravat.

He does indeed put it down to his having to wash and dress in a frenzied hurry so as to not to keep the pig farmer waiting on him. His usual fine wool black jacket and a red cravat with his white shirt. He listens to the clack of his boots on the polished tiles as he strides for his study to the gentleman waiting on him.

He makes his tall dark way down the stairs. An uneasy feeling stabs between his shoulder blades. It felt like eyes were pinning into his back. And when he turns and looks, he’s the only person around for miles. Old neuroses and feelings come bubbling to the surface. He banished them back. He was good at that.

He goes for his study. His uneasy hackles slightly raised by the recurring feeling, memories of a someone being near, that had even his blood chilling cold.

He batted the thought away with the contempt it deserved. They were safely ensconced in their warm sunny marble palace half a world away. Probably had someone else by now. All these centuries later. Found someone to replace him. They never had trouble attracting lovers. They’d both loved and moved on.

He opens his study door. The old familiar enfold of its edifying scent and strong walls ebb in at him once again. Apple green and dark walnut. The wood shelves and the huge carved mahogany desk. Accents of green velvet edged with gold on the settees and chairs. The huge arched stone fireplace with its medieval shields etched into the stone. The floor is pointed black and white tile that shimmers with firelight. This room smells like books, musty paper and the green sap of the pine forest.

Jomar has kept his tenant well stocked with tea and cake so he can see. He enters his rooms and bids the man a pleasant greeting on this cold morning. Noting with disdain the mountains of white paper piled on his desk like the snow was outside the large windows.

Herr Huber stands and wrings his flat cap hat nervously. Grateful for the heat of the fire. He tells Kylo worriedly that his rent will be late this year. The winter is cold and his barn is in disrepair from a recent storm. And his chimney is clogged and he’s a simple man just trying to make it through the winter, to feed and warm his little ones and his family. He has six mouths to feed.

Kylo holds up his hand to the man. He doesn’t need to hear anymore. His rent is forgone for the foreseeable future. He will write today to arrange for a man to come and fix the farmers chimney and restore his barn so the pigs don’t perish in the winter. He tells Mr. Huber that he may take home a pot of meat stew and bread, and fresh produce from his own kitchens.

He has next to little use of food. Iris doesn’t consume much. And there’s plenty spare here to feed his servants and his wife. He won’t see people’s on his land struggle. He wasn’t like other Lords. He won’t cripple and starve a family for his own gain and greed.

Oddly enough, what he can remember of his father and mother, head of their clan, simple folk, farmers and warriors both, they had taught him that kindness went further than coin. That sometimes mercy was a greater nobler power than savagery.

He could be horrific and demand money off his farmers for renting his cottages on his land. He could watch the family scrimp and beg and starve. But he wasn’t cruel. Whatever else he may have been- he wasn’t cruel. He didn’t value profit over life. No matter whose life it was.

The man has served his faithfully for many years. He breeds fine swine and feeds the castle and the surrounding butchers for ten miles all round. Kylo tells him this. How magnificent his fat stock is every year, without fail. Mr. Huber looks so relieved he almost sobs. Kylo fetched Jomar and told him to ensure the Huber family has all they needed for this latest wintry snap. Firewood. Blankets. Warm food.

The man shakes his hand so firmly in such gratitude. Kylo nods his acceptance. Jomar shows the man out. Kylo turns and growls at his desk. At the stacks of paper that wait for him to leaf through.

Most people assumed Lordly duties were purely ceremonial. Look good atop a horse on the hunt with his hounds. Beget his wife with lines and lines of sons for his heirs. Dress in fancy boots and fine jackets and order people about now and again as he arches a sardonic brow.

What most people didn’t realise was that a title came with an god awful amount of paperwork. Taxes. Land sales. Farming revenues and projections. He settled down to write his correspondence. Listens to the fire crack in the hearth, the snow gently beads to a stop fluttering out the heavens. The wind drops and no longer rattles at his big arched windows of the study.

He’s been hunched over the desk for four hours now. Eyes the ticking clock and leans back in his seat. Throwing down quill and rubbing his tired eyes. Pinching at the bridge of his nose til white stars streak and burst behind his eyelids. He leans back in his seat. It rolls and creaks under his weight. He shrewdly eyes the stack of papers that he’s barely made a dent in.

He heaved up from the chair. Taking himself over to the window. He took off his jacket after Mr. Huber left three hours ago. His brooding Lordship rolled his sleeves and got to work. He yanks on the unprevailing knot of his cravat. Wilton always did that knot up like he was Atilla the Hun. His attempt to keep Kylo trussed up in his civility.

He stands at the window and looks out upon his frosted gardens. The fine sculpted box hedges and shrubs. His study windows looked over the finely crafted gardens. The path lined with shrubs leading down to a frozen stone fountain, curving around and disappearing into the walled garden beyond. Near the deep dark box maze hedge dusted with snow.

His eyes snap quick to the two figures on the horizon. One is hulking and black. Muscled and brute. The other is slight and grey.

He smiles at the sight of his Iris leading Erland on a walk through the snowy gardens. Headed out through to the thick of the bright forest.

She heeded his advice. She’s in the long fur cloak he had bought specially for her. Entirely lined with white fur to keep the wearer warm as toast in a bitterly howling Bavarian storm.

It’s a pewter grey cloak and he can see a flash of blue wool dress underneath when she walks. The sleeves were long and draping, cuffs lined with fur. Medieval and long in design. And she’s got the hood pulled up over her head to keep the falling snow off her hair.

She’s holding Erland’s reins with a gloved hand. Walking along with him. She’s smiling and talking to his big idiot of a horse. Patting his neck. She lets go of the reins for one second to fix her gloves and he watches his stallion sink down and start rolling around in the snow. Shoving his nose and head into the powder and rolling around. Legs kicking up in the air.

Iris rolls her eyes and laughs. Gripping his reins and brushing him off once he topples over upright again. He nibbles at her coat hood. That was Erland’s sign of affection. Iris dodged the swing of his big senseless head. Smiling as she holds his bridle and sweeps away snow from his hairy velvet nose.

She reaches for the reins again and walks him further along. He watches until the snowy gardens swallow them up. Off into the forest. Out of sight.

Kylo finds himself smiling as he continues onwards with his work. He has her on his horizons in those bleak snowy gardens. That thought gives him comfort. Knowing that there, somewhere in these castle walls, she is there. It makes him smile.

He turns back to the monotony of his papers. Jomar comes in at some point and gives him a glass of wine. Kylo dismisses the offer of any food. His Butler exits with a tutt and a clever retort that Kylo misses. He merely grunts and returns to his arduous paperwork.

He gets into such a fierce pace with it all. He appears deaf to time. Jomar comes in and pours him more of his favourite wine. Lighting the candles for his lordship and stoking the fire.

Kylo’s hands are stained with smears of ink. Splatters of tulip red wax where he sealed some of his letters with his house crest. His eyes are straining terribly now to read scrawled handwriting in the dim dark. His back is whining with sore-stiff complaint. His cold fingers are cramping with pinching his quill all day and oddly enough his elbows now feel strangely numb.

The door creaks. Kylo barks out to what had to be his Butler coming to irritate him with questions or more food or drink. Or purely just to annoy him - maybe to hand him more infernal papers.

“What are you coming to inconvenience me with now, Jomar?” Kylo seeks lowly.

The rustle of silk skirts sweeping the tiles and the plume of golden pears and geranium perfume creeps to his attention.

“A dinner invite. I thought I might beg for the privilege of escorting you into the dining room.” Comes his wife’s answer. The gentle coo of a dove to his barking growl.

His head shot up from his concentrated task. He glanced across at the clock as he lays down his quill. It displays the lateness of the hour. The blur of snow melting in with the black night outside stands stark at the window. But he had no idea it was quite so late. She’s come to pry him away for dinner.

He watches her shut the door and enter the room. She’s dressed for dinner. A delicate embroidered silver silk dress. Trimmed with frothy white lace at the scooping wide neck. It’s the type of neckline that teases at her shoulders.

He sees she’s paired it with some of the family jewels he had Jones lay out. A glittering wreath of fat diamonds and sapphires shines deep and blue like a proud ring of stars around her neck. Her hair pinned back. Her cloud-grey eyes gaze across at him lovingly. A rosebud smile so sweet it could give him toothache.

She walks in and the fires light does something clever and devilish to the silk when she moves to stand opposite his desk. Amber kissed threads twining up her legs. Skin washed in faint peach from the light. It soothes the golden honey tones in her hair.

Kylo leans back in his chair before smiling and standing up. “You never have to beg for the courtesy of anything with me. My love.” He tells her.

Stretching out his back as he comes to stand. Feeling his hips and back crunch back into place. He rounds his desk and sighs in happiness to get his arms around her and kiss her warm cheeks. Grasping the back of her hips. Reeling her in for a hungry kiss. He’s missed her.

All day there’s been this hollow ache in the granite cavern of his heart and he just knows the sunshine liquid gold of his sweet wife and her kisses is what can fill it. He’s a smitten man and he’s no shame in admitting it.

She strokes his cheek. Pulls back from his plump, lush kiss. He tastes of scarlet wine. And she can see the ink stains smeared on his hands. His day of labours sunk into his skin.

“Thank you for edifying.” She says when they pull back. Kylo just rests his forehead against hers. For just a moment. She’s near and he just wants to savour it.

“How did you find Ranlor on your tour? Made friends with the ghouls in the dungeons?” He joked.

Something passes across her eyes that he can’t quite read. “Oh yes. We’re marvellously well acquainted now.” She jokes in mirth.

“How was your day?” She asks. Leaning around him and shrewdly eyeing the stack of papers leaves high on his desk. Mountains of creamy ivory cloth paper. She suspects his day was as arduous as it looked.

“Bureaucratic to the most annoying degree. People who think a titled gentleman has no responsibilities in life I would very much wish to show him the eight thousand sheets of letters and correspondence I had to wade through.”

“Hungry? I believe I heard Jomar said he’d opened an excellent Silvaner wine in an attempt to coax you out. And Mrs McTavish roasted a side of beef.” She smiles.

He kisses her. A glass of wine. His favourite roast beef and his favourite wife. As far as he’s concerned he can tip the rest of those letters onto the fire.

“Escort away. My business is done with me.” He smarts tiredly. She kisses his ink stained hand and makes a face of wifely sympathy at him. Hunched over his desk all day and running long into the night with responsibilities.

Kylo’s ears prick at hearing a scuffle come to the door. An instant later and Jomar opens it from the other side. “What now?” kylo barks at him. Narrowing his eyes at the man.

He seemed smug. That was never a pleasing sign. “I have something to strongly suggest and urge you to consider.”

“Will I like it?” Kylo asks blankly.

“Oh. Not at all.” Jomar insists sweetly. Iris smiles at their repartee.

“I don’t wish to stir up controversy or incite unrest with an impertinent suggestion...” Their butler begins.

“Liar. You love to be impertinent.” Kylo points out.

“It has been whispered and circulated industriously by the staff that we ought, perhaps...host a ball.” He explains carefully.

“A ball?” Kylo answers in a tone that suggested as if Jomar just voiced a wish to saw off Kylo’s leg with a rusty bread knife.

“They are all most excited by the prospect.” He adds as if that’s supposed to help. Kylo does not look amused. Jomar crosses his arms behind his back and tilts his head.

“I think a ball would be splendid. What’s wrong with a ball my love?” Iris asks her husband. Softly patting his grumbling chest.

“Hosting a ball is the sharpest pain in my royal lordly backside.” He answers.

“You host one every year for the tenants and farmers. How would this be different?” Iris asks

“That is business. If a ball is held for pleasure I’d have to invite half of Bavarian society and there’s a reason I seldom mix with that sort. Trust me.” There seems to bear heavy trace in his words. Something she suspects pierces deeper than any hatred of stuffy people and being trapped in decorous mortal conversation.

“It would be an awfully good way of announcing your marriage.” Jomar points out.

“You could Inform all your acquaintances in one go. Your lordship. You wouldn’t have to write to hundreds to inform them of the happy nuptials.” He points out. “Less letter writing for you.”

Kylo grumps a grunt.

He turns and spears a look to his wife.

“What’s say you?” He seeks.

Iris smiles lightly. “I wouldn’t mind hosting a ball as Lady Ren. And Jomar is right. It seems an appropriate thing to do to announce the marriage.” She dares admit.

“Although I have organised supper parties and tea, but I’ve never organised a ball before. So it would be new to me. I relish challenges.”

Jomar smirks. Kylo knows why.

“I saw that.” He grits out.

“I didn’t utter a syllable.” Jomar insists.

Kylo makes a grumpy noise once more. Shutting his eyes and sighing. He was overruled. By both butler and wife. He must yield-

“I’ll put you in charge of summoning a list of appropriate invitees.” Kylo charged to his Butler.

“Wonderful. And I’d be happy to help you with the organisation. Lady Iris. Consider me your right hand on the matter. I have helped his lordship with many a ball. I imagine his eyes for detail and finery isn’t quite as accomplished or discerning as yours.” He smiles.

Kylo’s glaring. Iris pats his hand and leads him out his study. Jomar walks them on through to dinner. Guiding the muscled mountain of her brooding vampire in to dine.

“Am I really hosting this ball because my butler and the staff expect so?” Kylo asks as they head down the dim candlelit hall. Moonlight fractures off the white tiles like little fragments off pearled stars. Eaten up into the treads of their feet.

“I’m afraid so. Will you be able to cope?”

“If I must. I suppose the sight of you in a silk ball gown and jewels will ease my suffering.”

Iris blushes and looks dismayed with him. But she’s still smiling.

“Jomar, perhaps I should have a word with cook and Mrs Jones tomorrow morning? We can decide what to do the ballroom and decorations.” She adds.

“Excellent proposition. My Lady.” Jomar counsels. “Might I also suggest another appointment with Mr. Schroeder for yours and his lordships wardrobe for the occasion. The host and hostesses must look their best.” He smiles smugly.

Iris smiles back. She did have one or two ideas for ballgown colours. And some for Kylo’s cravat and waistcoat too. Now money was no issue. She relishes being able to enjoy having pretty and fine things.

“Don’t drag me into this farce. I’m staying well out of it. After all. This is what beautiful wives are for. To take over the social calendar of a bored husband.”

Kylo insists. Leaning in and stroking a hand over his wife’s plump silk covered bottom. Luckily Jomar was leading them in front. So he didn’t see.

“Wicked creature.” She whispers up at him. Holding his hand where his reaches to take her elbow once more.

“You’re learning that just now?” He counters with a grin.

They enter the dining room and their place setting awaits them once more. The silver dinner service. The platter of fruits. The blazing fire. No Irish wolfhounds present lounging by it tonight. Just them two.

Dinner is quick in coming. Platter of sliced roast beef. Still with a touch of pink to the meat. Buttered baby carrots and peas and golden crispy roast potatoes. Heaps of peas mixed with chopped bacon. Iris gorges herself on it. Kylo’s finally in a relaxing setting. With a full belly, some excellent food and the stresses of his day not weighing on his mind.

They don’t lounge by the fire when dinner is over. They drink their wine and unanimously decide to both head for bed. Iris tells Kylo about Erland in the woods today. How the big silly beast had gotten frightened by a hare scarpering out of its snowy warren.

Kylo smiles as he sits on the edge of the bed and listens to her recount this story as she brushes her hair. Sat there in her chemise. Undressed and all the layers peeled away, his Lady is readying for bed. Hair curling and kinking down her ivory back. Curls of golden toffee and a blazing autumn woodland.

Kylo stands. He’d rid himself of his boots, jacket and cravat. Down just down to his open shirt, braces and breeches. He shucks his braces down to his hips. Rolling his shoulders. Looking at the faded smears on his hands that was the ink he’d tried valiantly to scrub away. The ghost of its smudge marred his hands still.

He crosses to his wife and crouches behind where she’s sat at her vanity dresser. He had it moved in their bedchamber. He wanted her being near him when she’s sitting to it at night. Slipping drips of perfume on her wrists. Unpinning her hair.

He sweeps that long curly curtain aside and kisses at the arch of her neck. Nestling his lips onto the seductive curve that enchanted him. Bewitched him from the first sight of it. So many pale moons ago in that ballroom he couldn’t even name, across the sea-glass green ocean in England on that frosty winters night.

She called out to every spec of his being. And here she is in his bedchamber in his Bavarian castle.

She sighs and he tastes the shiver that shudders right through her blood. Rising to the surface of her skin. Kylo peers over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror. Her creamy skin blooming with a pink blush. Pink and cream rose petals.

She can see the round of her shoulder is hiding his smile. His eyes swirl and glitter a pleased and very accomplished shade of gold - like old coin.

Iris twists back in her seat. Facing him where he’s knelt down. His big palms rasp on the cotton of her dress as he slides them over her kneecaps. Rests there.

“I wasn’t going to mention it but-“ she begins. Eyes in her lap. Kylo waits patiently at her feet like some loyal doe eyed canine.

“I went up to the turret today.” She admits. Looking guilty and wearing a pinched expression.

Kylo digests her words. Nods calmly.

“Are you incensed with me for keeping all those things?” He asks quietly. So quiet she almost doesn’t hear his voice carry over the twitching crackle of the fire in the hearth. Nor the wind chipping at the windows.

Her heart splinters like cracked porcelain. “Not even for a second. I assure you. Quite the opposite.”

Kylo frowns carefully up at his wife. Judging her reaction to be a truthful one.

“You kept all those possessions of theirs locked away up in the attic so as not to think about them or be reminded of the pain it caused you. My love, It broke my heart for you, to see that anguish. To think of you going through such a thing.”

Kylo holds her hands. Grateful grateful. So grateful for this woman and her intelligent eye and kind heart.

“I’m sprung from Viking soil my love. I’ve suffered worse. And my heart at present? It’s very well kept by the woman who whisked it away from me.” He assures.

“You’re not angry at me for intruding on that part of your life? The part you’d rather keep secreted away...” She seeks.

“No. I’m not. Ranlor is your home. By right, Iris. You may see any part of it you so desire.”

“You lost a love, my dear. You lost someone familiar and intimate to you as I am. Someone with a study and own bedchamber upstairs. It must’ve been the hardest burden to bear. The knowledge of those rooms being empty-“ She sighs.

She’s never fully known loss. Not until now. Not until today had she seen, firsthand, the extent of her husbands past. The full weight of his sadness and his ex-lover. How cherished. How beloved and close.

“It did sting a bit when we first parted, I can’t deny. When I finally realised it, the absence was an agony like nothing else. But it was quantified by the life I am able to lead now.” He explains.

“If I hadn’t walked away then, I wouldn’t be here now. Married to my beautiful wife. Sitting in our beautiful home. Kissing your neck- and wanting very much to get you into bed.” There comes a smug grin.

“I refuse to be thankful for anything that put you in a situation that caused you pain - but I must concur.” She admits.

“You may very well be the most understanding woman I’ve ever met.” Kylo remarks.

“You’ve met my mother. I believe such attributes stem from my fathers side.” Iris tells openly.

“Mirth aside.” Kylo presses seriously. “Thankyou. For being so amenable to some of the sordid things that lurk in my long, long past.”

“I don’t see anything sordid about love. No matter who it’s between.” Iris says obviously. “I’ve spent my life with what seemed to feel like such a starving absence of it. I will not censure it where it is known.” She states firmly.

Kylo smiles to that - he couldn’t not. He leans up and kisses her forehead.

“You have a good heart. Lady Ren. Far too good for the likes of me.” He marvels.

Iris shrugs. Cupping his jaw with her left hand. Stroking his cheek with her thumb. “I disagree entirely.” She hushes. After all he’s done for her, she cannot doubt the validity of his good heart. Even if he doesn’t believe it. She does and always will.

He discards his clothing and pulls on a nightshirt. Iris loves how his nightshirts have ruffles pleated down the hem. A feminine touch compared to the way his strong thighs peek out the bottom of it. She changes into hers too. The one with the drawstring neck. He banks the fire and extinguished the candles around the dim sultry red room. Swallowing of dark crimson ebbs in from the walls.

Iris slips into bed and opens the covers with a fold of her hand to welcome her husband back. He leans over and kisses her. Presses her into the bed. Throws the covers over himself and tugs her into his chest. He’s had a far too laborious day to consider making love - she knows this too. She’s seen the bags under his eyes.

He pulls her into the marble of his chest. Solid and weighted like a grand headstone. And she sleeps tucked there. He falls away too. Gently. Softly stroking her back until sleep claims him on swift wings. All consuming blackness comes. He’s too tired even to dream-

Until he isn’t.

He’s back in somewhere he never thought he would be. He’s back in that marble palace by the sea. Sun baked. Cold white stone and ornate hallowed halls. Gossamer gold silk curtains snapping and flickering on the breeze like a curling tongue of flame. There’s so much green and gold and blue at every huge open arch window. Flanked my pristine white columns. Too much Sea and too much clear sky and greenery and plants.

The opposite to the hulking stone walls of his castle. This place is open and stuffed with heat and flowers and air so thick it was warm syrup to breathe in. Kylo hates the heat. He grew sick of it. He prefers weather that sends him wrapping up in layers and boots and pelts.

He’s the opposite to the occupant of this glittering marble palace. Seashell chimes and wind chimes sparkle and twinkle on the dry hot breeze. Salty where it whips off the sea. Perfumed with hibiscus flower and trailing jasmine knotted around every column and balcony.

Kylo can feel the cool creamy stone underfoot. Ice where the baking sun hasn’t touched it. In the hallway lined with arches and the fluttering gold curtains. The sky behind him isn’t dark. It’s twilight blue. Thick sticky midnight ink scattered with lost petals of bursting stars. This must be a memory.

He walks along that corridor. Essences of plants and nectar enticing him to a place he knew well. He can feel the sweat on his chest and the back of his neck. He hates feeling like he’s boiling alive in his own skin. This heat and this place may have suited him before but it doesn’t anymore-

He comes to a doorway and a threshold he’s crossed so many times. Looks into the dim of the room beyond. The moon drenched a gossamer white canopy surrounding the teal blue and white bed. Blurring the figures within. It’s like there’s mist swirling around his eyesight. Fogs up what he can see of the people in the bed.

It’s no great leap to see what’s happening in that huge blue bed. Like the seabed. Frothing white waves of covers and the sea-glass blue green of the thin covers.

Under that gossamer silk curtain. In the velvet white of moonlight spilling over so much bare skin. The plants outside sway on the heat strangled sea salt studded air. Inside, here, bodies sway together in passion.

He can hear their groans of bliss. Sweaty skin rasping sticky against the icy kiss of the sheets. Clouds of moans and gasps sail across to him where he stands at the doorway. Looking in.

He can see a pale back with even paler hair spilling down it. Braids of coiling serpents and twining silver, wink moons light at Kylo from the back of his head. His long tresses were feathering past his sharp shoulders. His paper skin and his sharp and savage glass bones.

He’s rolling his hips into the person below him. Up on his hands flat to the bed by his parters shoulders below him. He looks like music when he moves. He looks like the finest work of art this world has ever produced.

Kylo can’t make out much of the figure below him. There’s many a time they had shared high class whores, or ladies of high rank. He supposed this was one of them.

This would be one of the women whose name and body he has forgotten long ago. One with red lips. One with curvy hips. One with sumptuous breasts and golden bronze skin and long necks. Beautiful exotic women.

This must be one of them; he catches glimpses of dark wild hair spilled across the pillow under Draegan.

He did always love dark untamed hair. He told him so many times as those slender fingers of his combed through Kylo’s own locks. Those fingers are now cupping this faceless woman’s jaw as he brings their faces together and kisses her brutally.

He lets her knot her fingers in his pallid hair. Tugging through the silk. He bends to suck her neck as he ploughs his hips into her harder. Deeper. Sharper. She moans his name louder. They always moaned loud for him. Sung his praises so loud kylo felt jealousy sting in the pit of his stomach.

Kylo’s watching him dip his lips to the crook of this woman’s neck.

“Ride me, little spark.” He commands with a curling smirk into her ear. That cruel cruel smirk. The dangerous one.

There was no mercy in life. The devil and all his temptations was made to be so much stronger than a man. That was the crux of Draegan’s charms. Stronger than god; more irresistible than anything.

A little feminine hand curls onto Draegan’s shoulder. He kisses her again and rolls to the bed when she asserts herself on top of him. Her body comes out from under the shield of those covers. And Kylo’s finally able to see her face-

Iris.

His stomach churns. The sweat on his brow and his neck burns. He’s had the breath shunted right out his chest like a battering ram crushing in his ribs. Mulching his blood and his bones and tearing out the heart of him.

Draegans hands take her hips and he slides her to grind on him. Leaning back and watching her tug and move on his cock. Tight. A velvet fist around him. She fits so well. She balances the flat of her hands on his lean chest and rides him slow and deep. Languid.

He wants to move. To storm. To rage. To rip that curtain down and steal her away. Steal back his wife from Draegans devilish clutches.

Kylo stands there watching her making love to another man. Bile and jealousy and rage caught like dead grey acid rising in his throat.

He watches her hair, that hair he loves, wild and thrashing down her back between her shoulders. Dark against the sticky sheen of her sweaty skin.

Draegan’s moans fall thick out his mouth like handsome shimmering notes of a lyre. Content to watch her grind he smiles up at her. Kylo watches from beyond the fog of the gossamer canopy wrapped around their privacy. Sheer silk walls keeping him out.

Draegan’s shaded ocean eyes glint, looking at her. Lazily cupping her hip. Lazily palming a breast as those gorgeous tits bounce above him as she fucks him. She throws her head back and he slithers forwards.

His muscled long arms wrapping around her. Gliding up her back. Caressing her shoulders. His hot mouth falling like the wet ocean against her breasts. Cresting and sucking and kissing. Catches her berry wine nipples with his nibbling teeth. Lush heat and sharp teeth. Bittersweet; like everything else about him.

“I’ve finally found you. _Oh_ \- after these years Iris. Finally we’re together.” He sighs as he kisses up her neck. Marks and sucks and licks the sweat that she drips. Seizing his hips and pulling her down on him til she groans like she’s being subjected to agony.

There was no agony for her. The agony is Kylo’s for having to watch this.

“Come undone with me.” He mouths against her chest. Biting over the place where her mortal heart is pumping like the wings of a tiny frail dove. Sweet nectar of her blood and her cunt driving him to distraction. Better than any scent he’s ever come across in his life.

She grabs the back of his neck and they share a scorching kiss. His tongue stroking along her lip as he feels her orgasm crashing over them both. Dripping down onto the bed and the tacky sheets.

She sighs and sobs his name. Calls out to him and him alone. Hands clutching the silk of his hair. Rocking hips shuddering to a stop. Kylo can see the tremors in her thighs from here. Where she’s got her legs split over Draegan’s lap. His cock most likely stretching her pretty pink cunt wide.

He runs his teasing hands up from the curve of her ass, skims up her hips, over her waist. Settled his long fingers there to grasp her. They mould into a calm embrace. The tempest hot storms of their orgasms passing. Wrap their arms around each other. Caress each other with breathless love.

Kylo’s rooted to the spot. Dying his awful painful death all over again. Draegan opens his eyes and daggers a look right into him- and smiles calmly. There was no malice in his smile. Nor living in his glimmering eyes.

Iris turns back too. Rosy cheeked and beautiful. She gives him that very same carefree smile. A loving one. As if she hadn’t just put him through the sheer agony of witnessing his wife say she’s finally found another man.

She says his name. He watches her rosebud mouth form the letters. Calling for him.

He doesn’t hear it anymore. His mind spins. Blackness and red and scarlet. He scrunches his face and then his eyes snap open to their bedchamber.

Sweat burns on his brow. Drips off his nose and settled in the divot of his shoulder blades. Skating down his back. There’s something soft persistent at his shoulder. He blinks rudely awake.

He looks up and sees his little dove there. Some strands of hair hanging down in her worried face from her straggled plait she wore to bed. Her brows crinkled. “Kylo?” She asks him. Worry creeping in on her tone. Knelt beside him. Pear and geranium perfume crooning across to him with the simple soap of her skin

He clears his throat and launches up. Sits up. Chest heaving. Looking around their bedchamber. The night sky pours in thick and blue-black from the window like tar.

“You were thrashing and calling out.” Iris tells him. Laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. It’s terrible but he fights the compulsion to shrug her away. He doesn’t.

He grabs her hand and kisses it as he turns his head. His sweaty upper lip bleeding onto her hand. She kneels behind him where he sits and throws his legs over the side of the bed.

“Shall I ring for something?” She asks as she soothingly strokes his back.

He rubs his eyes. Blinks away the ferocity of the damaging dream. He can’t speak just yet. He just breathes. His chest feels like a over puffed sack of air with a slow leak. His lungs hurt.

She lays her head against his back and links her arms around his middle from behind. Nestling her lips at his shoulder. Kissing the triple scar that strikes down his shoulder where his night shirt gapes. He’s dripping sweat and disgusting through the thin cloth but she holds on as if he’s powder fresh.

“I’m alright. Just-“ He can’t even form the words.

He gets up from the bed and her hands slide off him. Wanting to clutch on but watching him walk away. He crosses to the double doors to the parlour and opens it. Disappearing on through she watches his linen clad back. The shirt only just covered his ass. She heard his treads, then they stopped and then a faint clink. And then he’s back at the door.

A crystal cut glass with two fingers of brandy inside. He sips it slowly, blocking the doorway. Before he trudged across to the chairs by the fire and sits up in one.

Iris watches him worriedly from her spot kneeling on the sweaty sheets of their crimson blood and snow bed.

Kylo finds her eyes. Opens his arm and gestures her over with a kind warm look that beckoned her, with a soft “Come here dove.”

She slips out of bed. Her gown tumbled to her knees and she walks across to her husband. He stands his stiff drink down on the end table and reaches for her. Slopes her little body across his lap. Tucks her bottom onto his thighs. Legs thrown over his. Arms around her waist. Nuzzles his head into her shoulder.

His mouth trembles with the words when he says them. “Tell me you love me.” He breathes out shakily. Resting his forehead against her. Not looking up.

She frowns. Curls her hand through his hair. “Kylo Ren. I love and adore you.” She hushes gently.

Whatever his disjointing dream had been- it might have been one of the blood soaked horrors of his past. Left him feeling monstrous and isolated. But he’s not isolated anymore. He has her.

She kisses his head. “I love you.” She repeats. Because she will never cease to say it when he needs to hear it.

“I’m sorry.” He says afterwards. They sit and listen to the fire and hold each other.

“Nothing to forgive.” Iris assures him.

“Come back to bed.” She says. Because she intends to hold him all night until those baying demons inside his head fall away. She’ll drive them out with love and honesty. She’ll kiss his closed eyes and remind him he is loved so dearly.

She does. And she always will.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me hear some thoughts: predictions; wants? Let me hear it good people. I love listening, don’t be shy ❣️


	24. Tempest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,  
> Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I must add a long overdue note that my beautiful friend thepilotanon helped me come up with with idea for Jomar’s son, Ravi 💕💕 love you very much dear. I always enjoy our talks on tumblr xoxo Thankyou for always listening and tossing ideas around with me

Kylo always liked the hunt.

It’s woven into his visceral nature. The seek. The chase- _the kill._

Adds into the flames and fury and brute tempest of the lusting animal lurking in his blood. It’s simmering, brewing, prowling in his veins this morning. Stalking his body because it knows-

It knows there will be blood.

But still he respected that the beasts he’d kill are dignified animals. They deserve a dignified death. They will feed his servants and his people. He has nothing but respect for the noble creatures. Be it boars or stags.

He makes quite the picture joining the humble villagers and tenants of his land on the deer hunt. Men on horseback and on foot. And he joins. Riding Erland. His 18 hand, stocky Percheron. All his hounds baying around Erland’s hooves. His image is a strong, proud, Lordly one.

Several huge dogs padding behind him. His almost seven foot horse proudly trotting along. Sat back, relaxed. Back straight. A sheer dynamite shot of masculinity and gentry if ever there was one.

There in his long frock overcoat. Hips rolling with Erland’s strides. Hands in his leather gloves. Black riding boots up to his strong calves. A finely woven black wool charcoal waistcoat, tailored to fit him perfectly. A white shirt pressed and blistering white and a red cravat tied impeccably.

He holds Erland’s reins suavely in one hand. Looks so casual but his aura pulses with the threat of his control. Over his hounds. Over his steed.

Erland is behaving impeccably this morning. He too likes the challenge of the hunt. Flies his master, and the trailing hounds sprint ahead, cutting a swathe through the obstacles the forest offers. Fallen trees, logs and puddles and hills and bumps. The scent of the preys pumping pulse thick on their tongues.

It was on Kylo’s too. He had to be careful. His tenants oft commented how remarkably he could track the fleeing animal through the trees. They remarked he must have a good eye for hunting. Sometimes he had to hang back merely to make it fair. To lose suspicion when some other man could claim the victory of the hunt instead.

It’s cold and bitter this morning as he joins his hunting party. Jomar and two footman are there, at the castle gates serving brandy and thick dark wedges of boiled fruitcake off silver trays to all the locals when Kylo rides Erland up to the gathered party.

It’s like the restlessness of the woods lives in his veins. He can feel it pulsing. Can feel the creatures in these woods, nestled between the trees, curious at the humans gathering near.

He can sense the wolves padding around in their packs. The forest indeed lives in his blood. All the energy and the life within it. Its savagery itches under his skin.

The Germans even have a word for it; Waldeinsamkeit _._

It represented the sublime or spiritual feeling of being at one, at peace, with the woods. With nature. Kylo subscribes heavily to this feeling. He always had. Vampire or no-

He dismounts Erland and takes a drink with the men. Warm smooth brandy curdling with the excitement building on his tongue. It was snowing still. Hadn’t stopped all night. Flakes gently soften down on the breathless wind and snow. He feels them bleed ice onto his hair where the flakes melt on his scalp.

He takes a deep deep breath of that pine, sticky sap and sharp snow and ice. The green of his forest. His land. His home. His nostrils burn with it. He has quite a taste for blood this morning.

The frost sneaks into his dead lungs. Fills them with cold blazing Bavarian air.

He rose and dressed early. Quietly. Left his slumbering wife curled up safe and snug in their chambers. In her snowy night gown lost amongst the pallid sheets and under the crimson eiderdown. Her hair a wild curled storm on his pillow. She’d left it undone last night. He stroked his fingers through the silk of it and kissed her cheek before he left. She smelt like their bedsheets and her perfume. He caught a delicious snatch of it before he departed.

She’s probably awake now. Taking breakfast on a walnut bed tray as she reads through more items and letters regarding the soon to be hosted ball that required her attention. It was a mere two days away now. Three weeks had passed since their first night arriving at the castle. Married routine slowly beginning to take shape;

She also had a study now too. One just down the grand echoing marble hall from his. A room with high ceilings, white baroque gilded walls, parquet floors and a view of the trimmed neat gardens. And the woods rising jagged and murky green above the horizon.

The massively tall windows she had covered with forest green velvet drapes the colour of the brightest emerald, to match the French settees gilded in gold. A foreshadowing of the deepest black woods looming on the castle horizon.

Theres an entire wall full of any books she wanted - he had to ultimately insist on her spending money for that. She had a chaise longue in Apple-mint velvet poised by the fire. Kylo had a maid pick fresh flowers to be in the antique baluster China vase on her desk every morning.

Great blooming sweet roses. Spilt veins red, Virgin bride white and pallid pink. Sometimes it was fat peonies, or austere white lilies. Every morning a new bouquet of blooms greeted her. The fire had been swept and lit.

Her study come boudoir came together nicely. It was entirely her section of the castle. One where she could lounge on her velvet settees by the fire, write letters, read books, receive callers and take tea or lunch if she wished.

She’d take Erland out for rides in the snow each day. Read in the library or spend an hour or two sketching in the orangery or the woods. The orangery and hot house she told him was fast approaching becoming her favourite room in the castle. She’d even now call on cottages and tenants past the woods alone. She’s growing comfortable with her life here. Such a proficient Lady of Ranlor

His tenants adored Iris. Their wives, dogs, livestock. All of them adore his wife. When they rode together into the villages and cottages on his land, the local children mobbed her and clamoured for Lady Ren.

Fussed at Erland and surrounded her in a gaggle and escorted her around. By the end of his visits she had flowers sticking out her hair that they’d picked for her. Or little tokens of homemade affection. Found acorns, or dried papery leaves in pretty colours. Pressed into her hands. Items of friendship and adoration.

They did the rounds together in her first week as Lord and Lady. They’d loved her since then. Iris insisted on seeing all the nearby farms, farmers wives and families. Bringing them a welcome basket of baked goods, potted pickled jars of things, fish or meat or crab, and some wrapped loaves of round rye breads, and even some bottles of Dornfelder wine from Ranlor’s cellars.

Kylo couldn’t lay eyes on her for an hour one morning and when he located her, following his nose and tracing her perfume, he found himself treading towards the kitchens. And there she was. In amongst the ovens and butchers blocks. Under dried herbs hanging from racks above the enormous counter table, helping cook, Ravi, and the kitchen maids prepare foodstuffs for his tenants.

He watches from the doorway. She’s dusted in flour. Her forehead is shining and her cheeks are flushed pink pink blood red. Little curls stick to the nape of her neck where she’s twined her hair off her face. It’s stuffy and humid in here. A cloud of stuffy heat wrapping around them from the fierce ovens. The solid brick walls of the castle kept in heat well where it seeps out the big ovens.

She’s helping Ravi knead some dough that they’re going to bake in the huge bread clay oven they have. Dough clings to their sticky fingers and they laugh together. Even cook smiles a little at Ravi’s antics. Kylo saw it all. Before she’s back to barking orders about not over stretching the dough.

He ducked away without announcing himself. When he found her wandering down a hallway later, all clean and presentable again. Fingers free from dough. Dirty apron nowhere in sight. He sweeps her into a corner and kisses her so hard she sees stars and he makes a passing gaggle of maids blush at seeing the pair of them.

His reveries of his dear darling wife are interrupted as men begin to mount their horses. The hunting horn starts to blare. The dogs begin to bark. Tails wagging in frenzy. But they won’t lurch away into the chase. Not until Kylo tells them too.

  
His hunting dogs were excellently trained. One snap of his fingers or one command in Bavarian and they’d call to heel - or bay for blood.

He reaches over and drinks down one of the brandy cups. Staring into the woods ahead as his blood starts pumping raucously in his veins. He hears the distant patter of hooves and the terror racing through the animals blood. It zips straight onto his ears. Falls like the beautiful sound it is.

“You better mount up. Your Lordship. The hunts afoot.” Jomar says up at him as he swings up onto Erland.

Kylo grins as he taps Erland’s side roughly. The hounds race after him as colt and master start to make a gallop towards the chase after the tenants. Wind ripping ice at his skin, a thousand years worth of hunting and chasing bubbling burning in his heavy set bones - like vinegar.

He races Erland ahead of his tenants. Mainly because his horse was so fast and stocky he could outrun the brunt of their sweet bays.

But also because he doesn’t want them to catch onto the melting gold of his eyes.

All of it quakes inside him. The energy of this forest. The flurry of snow as he blurs through it. His coat whipping at his sides. The ice tearing at his face and hair. His hounds panting and slobbering beside him.

The wolves howl upon the near horizon. Terrible almost mournful cries pierce the snow. They’ve scented this too. This mania. They’ll prowl and survey to see if they can snatch and scraps the hunters leave behind.

Kylo doesn’t know there’s more in the long reaching fingers of the shadows in these snowy woods, than him, his tenants, and the animals they hunt.

A pair of unyielding topaz eyes and a sylph figure watch him from afar.

Really, he could pass unnoticed so long as he wanted too. He could be that fleeting shape of shadow out the corners of men’s eyes. The sixth sense that slithers along their spines like a serpent. They should trust in the little prickling hair that rises on the napes of their necks - for he’s the reason they have them.

The wolves cries run along his pale skin. Such a long time since he heard beasts like those baying after their Master and Lord on his hunt.

Iris hears the wolves too. She hears the crackle of a harsh shot pouring through the forest air. Through blurry eyes she surveys the white fog of their bedroom window. The red crimson drapes stand rigid either side of the view. Guarding it.

She folds herself back in the great cosy bed. She’s had breakfast brought up to her and long since finished it. Rose came to collect the empty tray and asked if she wanted to bathe or dress. Iris tells her she’ll remain in bed a while longer.

She’s curled up with a gripping novel from her husbands library. She couldn’t put it down. Kylo had to tug it out her hands last night in bed. She read til damn near three in the morning. He blew the candle out in a puff and gathered her to his chest. Grumbled that she can read more tomorrow. Darkness is a time for sleep and for cuddling ones husband.

She must’ve dozed again. Listening to the crackle of the fire pop and sizzle. Laying a heavy lulling weight on her as she cosies under the thick covers and feels nothing but feathers and quilts and soft soft warm bed at her back.

She felt a tiny bit guilty for gorging on her laziness. But she’s savouring the rest and calm for now before she has to be up paying calls this afternoon to the Zuckerman’s - taking a basket of ointment and various foodstuff for their relative who has a nasty chest ailment brought on by the savage cold of winter. She was riding Erland out to see them this afternoon and she has approximately three million things to check about the ball preparations.

The thing that serves to wake her is when the bedroom door loudly slams back to the wall. Shuddering in place from the strong vampiric arm that threw it open.

Iris flinches and looks up to see her husband crowding all the air out the room with the way he’s stood in the doorway. She clenches and gasps all in one. He stands there panting. Raking his eyes over her.

His eyes are more golden than all the sands of sun baked Egypt.

He tilts his head across at her in a way that looks thoroughly predatory to Iris. There’s something almost canine in nature about it. She sits up and the book is forgotten as he crosses the room in urgent fast strides.

“Still abed at this hour?” He smirks down at her as he comes flush to her side of the bed.

Iris feels very weak. Blushing like a fool. Clenching her thighs together. He could smell her arousal all the way from where he stood. The sweet tang of her spicing the air from the second she saw his eyes as he entered the room.

She knows every pulsing nerve in her body is calling out for this man. It’s what he does to her. He calls out to every spec and in return, her whole being cries out for him. She’s not sure where the vampire begins and the loving doting husband starts in that regard. She doesn’t know which half enchants or bewitches her more-

All she knows is; she can never deny the gaze of those gold eyes boring into her.

“Too much late night reading I suppose.” Iris answers. Knowing fully why there’s a wobble to her voice. She swallows looking up into his face.

“How was your hunt?” Iris asks. Looking up the tall tower of her husband. He seemed somehow taller and stronger in one of _these_ moods.

“Successful. But I’m afraid It’s nowhere near finished yet.”

He leans over the bed. Looking smug as ever. He rips the covers off his dear little wife and drags her across the bed by grabbing one of her ankles.

Cold snatch of leather gloves on his hands shrieking up her legs with the shock. She squeaks his name and laughs as that action rucks her gown up to her thighs. He looks down at her there, pale and pink pretty, all exposed to him from the pale bed of their covers.

His mouth fills with saliva and he drops to take one knee. There’s no proffered explanation or words. No gilding the lily. He throws her nightgown to her hips and laps deeply at her exposed cunt.

Sucking her sweet lips into his mouth and drooling everywhere on her. He suckles her clit hard. Rubs his lips and nose everywhere to incite friction. To incite lust.

He growls into the pink heaven between her legs like the beast he well and truly is.

His lapping attentions don’t last long. As much as he adores pleasuring her, sinking his tongue deep into her crushing silk walls and her pink pink pussy. He pulls back. Growling and drooling. Strings of them sticking to his face. He crudely licks his lips as he rises up and arches over the bed, over her as his cold hands rip needy at his trouser falls.

He hasn’t even taken off his gloves. His boots or his coat. He trampled snow and dirt on the carpet and still he doesn’t care. He’s got wiry dog hairs on his coat but none of that matters as he unlaced his hard cock and guides it quickly between his wife’s thighs.

Slicks into her hot cunt, he got her just wet enough to take him, and now he slides home in one brutal surge. Slapping together.

“Spread your legs. I want to fuck you deep.” He growls. The voice snarls out his rumbling chest.

Iris moans gutturally and the sound is sweet manna to him. His body and his weight and his cock all pressing down and into her so suddenly, the pleasure that spears through her is dark and deep and terribly sudden. So potent. Her toes curl and she can barely breathe.

She throws her head back and moans as Kylo begins to rut - to fuck. To hammer deep into his wife as he plunges deep. His coat envelopes her on the bed. He grunts, tearing her gown down her shoulder and shoving his nose into her neck. Sighing and sinking deeper as he roughly encourages her legs over his hips.

He growls and rips her linen gown in half. Right from the neckline to the hem. Tears the fabric right off her body to see her - her nipples hard and exposed to the cold. Breasts jolting with his thrusts.

Goosebumps prickle along every inch of her skin. He mouths at every new inch he uncovers with stabbing teeth and sloppy kisses. Sucks hard on her nipples and hummed in pleasure at the taste of them til she cried out. Grazes her collarbones with his teeth.

“I’ve got a limited patience this morning sweet wife.” He rumbles into her sternum. Pulling back and fucking so deep and fast it was a sharp ache and he moaned louder and louder with every thrust - getting faster and rougher. Pounding her poor cunt senseless.

“Flip over on your belly. I need you from behind. I want to fill you up.” He orders gruffly.

When he speaks she can see the pointed knives of his fangs hiding behind his plump lips. Devils white daggers where he bares his teeth and growls out loud as he’s slamming into her. The eyes are still as gold as melted coin. Brighter. Hungrier. He pulls back and almost whines when his hard cock slicks out of her warm tight welcoming pussy.

Especially as she meekly turns over and looks back at him. He fists his cock in his hand - they are mingled and sticky on his skin. He strokes himself as she bares her body for him. He rips the rest of that gown off her back. Shreds it to tatters.

Looks now at the pale beauty of her all naked for him. Shivering. Waiting. Lustful. Her round curvy hips and her plump ass. He leaves his cock and reaches out for her instead. Taking a hip in each hand and yanking her to the edge of the bed. Gripping fistfuls of flesh. Hauling her where he wants her.

He licks his lips looking down as he guides his cock into that swollen hot pussy. So pink and glossy and she’s like wet velvet to sink into.

He could tease her with his cockhead and rub it up and down and all over her - but truth is, he’s desperate. He’s needy. And he needs to rut her and claim her until she’s full of his cum.

It’s just what the wanton beast desires- he spanks her beautiful ass once with an open palm and listens to her squeak. Flinching up the bed and thighs trembling.

He sinks in slowly. Admiring how her softness parts for him. Stretched wide to take him. He wasn’t easy to take. He knew and understood this.

When he plunges to the hilt he throws his head back and moans so loud. His growl shakes the ceiling. He hears her whines and they sound beautiful.

The twisted part of him almost imagined that they are whimpers of pain or revulsion. Like the ones he used to pull from girls he fed off. Only this is so much better- this is the sound of his meek sensual wife gasping for to get his cock inside her. Stuffed to the brim.

He grabs handfuls of her ass and ruts nice and deep. One even long stroke and she almost falls to the bed in her shivering pleasure. He covers her back and smiles a cruel smirk against her shoulder. Chuckling. His laughter brushes along her skin like the rough scratchy wool of his coat.

“You think I’m going to be quiet? I can’t be quiet when I’m fucking you, dove. I’ll shout so loud I’ll wake the whole damn castle. Let them listen to how hard I’m going to fuck my wife.” He enunciated his harsh words with a vulgar thrust that felt like it pushed out her belly.

“You can scream my name to heaven and back- let me hear you cry it out. Cry out for your Lord, my Lady.” He smiles. Moaning in between several brutally hard thrusts. They slurp together where their bodies are joining. He can feel her leak down his sac. Juicy wet and perfect.

She can only offer gasps and pleas. He soaks up every one. He can smell her. All of her. Every drop and every scent. Her blood. Her sweat. Her cunt. The blush on her cheeks. He can taste it. That divine hot pink.

His hands are leaving sharp nail prints in her gorgeous ass where he’s grabbing her so tight. She doesn’t even feel it. The hunt had got his blood pumping and now he’s pounding that predatory energy out on her body.

One hand woefully leaves those hips, and one cold leather gloved hand slithers up her spine like the kissing touch of a cold serpent. He slithers his fingers into her loose hair and twined his thick digits around the strands there, forcefully pulling her head back, making that obscenely fuckable arch of her body.

Leaning in to run his teeth and his mouth up her neck as he pumps into her shallower. The smack of his hips hitting her ass slows for a moment. He sucks over her hammering pulse and hets a teasing taste of the hot blood pumping under her skin.

“ _Gods_ you smell so good. So tempting. You have no idea.” He huffs open mouthed against her neck. Muggy steam of his voice splashed against her sweat dotted skin. She can feel the growls of him deep in the marrow of her bones.

She does scream when he renews his pace. His cock throbs when she screams. That terrible part of him loves her protestations of pleasure. They sound like agony and that’s awful that he likes it so much. The animal savours it. Loved the screams.

In the state he’s in, worked up and his blood cravings kicked into mania, he won’t last long. He’s hard and fast with the way he moves. Iris gets little warning his hand still tangled in her hair. The other seeks for her left breast and cups it. Fingers toying and brushing her hard nipple. His hips roll with thrusts and she tries to ride them as best as she can.

His mouth is over her ear again. Hot breath kissing the shell of her ear. “Cum for me my darling. Cum on your husbands cock.” He urges in a growl so low it makes her thighs quiver. She sobs.

His hand abandons her breast and digs into her hip again. She cries out, that ache low in her belly tightening somehow as she clenches down hard. He snarls when she does. Fucks harder. They both groan and shout in unison.

She feels him slam into her back as he goes hell for leather. His teeth on her neck again. He knows how dangerous a temptation it is. He just can’t stay away from the sirens call of her pulse and all that meant to him.

“How is it possible to need someone as much as I need you? I’m in you so goddamn deep and I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone-my gods. Iris.” He cries mournfully as his climax gains on him.

His belly grows hard. Clenching up ready or what’s going to come. The storm of his pleasure will break on her like savage waves dashing the rocks.

They’re flushed and sweaty and fucking like beasts and she likes it far too much. They cum, locked tight together in a cacophony of brutal agony and bone deep bliss.

Kylo sinks his teeth into where her shoulder meets the join of her neck. He doesn’t break the skin but it wouldn’t take much more. He bites down hard.

He snarls into her skin as he sinks home deep and fucks her full.

In this state he always was liable to produce more cum than was normal. It’s the rutting wolf needing to fuck and fill their mate. And he’s biting the scruff of her neck. He finds that somewhat an irony.

Nothing moves now in their bedroom but the cruel north wind howling at the window, like it’s another pair of eyes spying on them in their fucking.

A dying dwindling chorus of grunts and sweat and blushing skin. Slapping bodies and dripping sweat. Muggy moans and calming breath as their orgasms fade away. The lust and pleasure grows quiet in them.

Iris can’t believe the sheer carnality of him. He took her hips in hand and was still rutting himself deep. Whining like he’s in pain and she can feel the hot splash of him still splashing inside her. Going on and on.

Their thighs trembling in aftershock together. He’s humming now onto the tender skin of her shoulder where he’s still biting.

She feels the raw indents of his carnal teeth when he pulls away and kisses there instead. Covering her bruised dark spot with sloppy spit-wet kisses.

She feels his enormous chest move against her back. Hard and panting. His cock is still inside her. As crudely big and as throbbing as ever. He seemed to swell up when he climaxed. Felt entirely too much inside her.

They slowly regain their heads. He shuffles them forwards onto the messy bed. Pulls her on her side, still with his cock sunk deep. He wanted to remain in the clutch of those tight velvet walls for just a while longer. Feel her gorgeous cunt slacken on him as they catch their breath. As she sighs and lets her head fall back into his shoulder.

He holds her tenderly. He couldn’t not after the way he just used her into pleasure in such a rough way.

“If thats the state of you after winning a hunt. I hate to think what you would do to me if you lost...” She sighs. Still catching her breath.

He nuzzles into her neck. Smelling her hair and grounding himself. He feels the ruttish animals claws on him slip away.

“Mmm. If I lost, I think I would do all sorts of filthy, unspeakable depravities to you to help soothe my wicked, wounded soul.” He promises.

Chuckling into her shoulder. Folding his coat around her to keep her warm. His gloves are softer than butter travelling her hips and the round hills of her body. Warmed from the friction of his gripping her so hard.

His grip could shatter bone and crush bodies with no issue. But with her he takes care not to cause as much damage as he knows he’s capable of.

A little tease of teeth. A bit of rough handling. She’s indicated she loves that side of him and that side is eager to love her right back.

“What’s the rest of your day looking like, my dove?” He asks her.

“Well, now I believe a bath is in order before I go down to discuss the last minute arrangements with Mrs Jones. Then a ride out on Erland to the Zuckermans to take them an invalids basket.” She tells him. Holding his hands where they are linked around her belly. Now she starts the feel the raw burn of his bite-mark stinging her neck.

He snuggles closer. Rubbing the tip of his cold nose into the back of her neck. Not able to fight off his grin.

“Sorry about the bite.” He drawls in a smile. Not sorry in any manner. He feels how her pussy clenches once around him when he says that in a voice that’s as vulgar as the rough sex they just had.

“Conjugal hazard. I believe I should take it in my stride. Marrying a big dangerous vampire, there’s bound to be some daring consequences.” She teases turning back and catching his eyes. Swirling warm honey and crushed walnut. That little glimmer of beast not quite let entirely out his system yet.

He hums and makes a questioning look across at her. “Daring am I?” He seeks. “How dashing you make me sound.”

“Most certainly.” Iris concludes. Placing a kiss on his nose. “May you let me go now. This ball won’t organise itself.”

Kylo savours her groan as he pulls away. Careful to keep his mud smeared boots off the bed. He cages her down into it. Kisses her collarbones. Her chin. Peers up and takes in the blush still crowning her cheeks.

“My bath is big enough for two.” He dares to inform her. And really, how could she even resist such an offer.

She takes him up on it. He pulls her up from their bed. He shooed away the help after the water is brought up and they sit together under the delicious enfold of heat. Scrub down with rose soap until they’re squeaky clean again. They’re dusted in frothy pink bubbles from it. Kylo sits her in his lap and makes sure every inch is scrubbed. He’s very diligent. He insists it’s purely a husbandly duty. No pleasure in it whatsoever.

Growls that he doesn’t enjoy it at all - having her bosoms under both his big hands. He assured her it’s all in the name of duty to get her clean. She makes a joke that there isn’t enough water in the world to keep him clean. He smiles at that.  
  
  


Tells her that not even holy water can cleanse the likes of him.

The maids are utter darlings. They say nothing about his Lordships trail of clothes leading to the bathroom. Nothing regarding the sounds of sloshing bath water and manly murmurs and her ladyships giggles as Kylo’s hands wander. Nothing whatsoever about the absolutely shredded nightgown they find discarded on the floor like debris.

Rose picks up the clothes and smiles coyly, cheeks blushing as they gather the clothes and make the mussed bed. She helps herd out the giggling chamber maids and leaves a dress out for her Ladyship. A deep wine crimson trimmed with white lace to the neck and sleeves. She had a feeling marital privacy might be what her Lady would prefer this morning.

Iris eventually dresses and pins her own hair. Wandering down to the kitchens with her husband parting with her company at his study door. Pulling her in for a sweet kiss that completely belied his earlier feral behaviour.

Iris kisses him back. A hand on his cheek. She’s off to find their redoubtable housekeeper. Kylo watches her until she walks out of sight.

She eventually finds their excellently bossy housekeeper in the ballroom. Where the whole castle staff seemed to be bustling and busy. And had been since dawn.

They’d brought in the garlands to dry. Ready to hang and drape all over the walls in the room. Holly, ivy and greenery plucked right out the forest. An army of footmen are sweeping the floor and moving heavy antiques around. The table pushed to one wall where they’ll serve warm negus, brandy and punch.

The floors are being swept by maids under Jones severe guard. Chandeliers and candlesticks all polished til they shine like the sun caught in a mirror. Iris walks into the room and the scent of Bavarian forest strangles the air with its pleasant wintry green.

Mrs Jones is part way through inspecting the starched icy linens for the table - nothing less than spotless will do, when she turns and catches sight of her Ladyship. Ducking under two footmen carrying out a long rolled up rug.

“Good morning Mrs Jones. I spy your expert influence in all this fine work.”

Mrs Jones blushes in pride a little. She was always a woman who took great joy in a task well done. “All the arrangements are almost complete. I shall be doing a final walk through later. I believe cook was keen for a word with you my lady.” She tells.

Iris recognised the list they’d made together written on the open page in the notebook in her hands. All the items they’d had to check over for this upcoming ball. Candles in plenty supply. Not to mention the food, weeks of planning a menu with cook, and seeing to the the decoration and cleaning of the seldom used grand ballroom.

Iris takes glad joy in seeing all their planning come into fruition. She asks Mrs Jones to see to Jomar setting some nice bottles of red wine on the table at the servants supper tonight in thanks for a task well done.

She thanks Mrs Jones earnestly - departing for the kitchens. Dodging the maids sweeping brooms across the tiles. Everything was shaping up beautifully. She heads down the winding twist of hallways and corridors, right into the bowels of the castle. Mrs McTavish’s excellent cooking croons to her in the air before she even enters the kitchen.

Claggy smell of butter and doughy warm of pastry is thick in the air. Salt and bread and all the lovely warm scents of a kitchen in full busy order. Iris rounds the corner to the door and the full expanse of Ranlors medieval sized kitchen greets her.

It is a surprising how much light reaches down here. Big arched windows let plenty of the snowy horizon in. Along the walls there are thick oak counters and shelves upon open shelves of copper cooking pots of all sizes and shapes. Glinting cleanly in the sparkling light. In an alcove near the door there is a huge triple cast iron stove. Iron black pots bubble and simmer and delightful culinary smells seep out from under their lids.

There’s a big rack hung from the ceiling, poised over the very long oak table running along the middle of the room. Strung with fresh and dried herbs. Big leafy bunches of Bay, thyme and sage. The wood of the huge table is chunky and thick and sliced with years upon years worth of labour, and rolling pasty and sharp knifes hacking into the wood. Chopping into haunches of animals or game.

Iris smiles at who she sees gaggled around the far end. Near the warmth that leeches out the stoves snd from the huge half. The fireplace she imagines went back to the days when big beasts would be lanced on skewers and turned on a spit over the flames.

The castles incredibly fat kitchen cat, a marmalade tabby called Clarence, whose occupation was keep away the mice and the rats. This lazy feline slumbers on a warm pebble-grey flagstone tile near the open fireplace at the end. Eyes shut. Purring in bliss. Resting near Jomar’s feet as he enjoys a cup of tea fireside.

The fires half is decorated with a couple of oak chairs with batted down cushions on the seats. Jomar fills one seat and Cook has a little helper in the form of Ravi, helping her to beat something in a large copper mixing bowl. Kitchen maids decorated the side counters. Chopping, washing and stirring. Baking for the anticipated ball.

Everything smelled divine, butter and dough and warm golden flaky pastry, and Iris marvels in the excellence of the big artfully assembled game pie sat on the table as one of the maids brushes butter over it, it’s a work of art. She expects no less from their able bodied bossy cook.

She was a stout mature middle aged woman with lots of body shape and always had a ready quip on her sharp Glaswegian tongue. Her green gaze was like getting tangled poison ivy if she was displeased. She had ravens hair shot through with bolts of silver. Always kept her long locks tamed in her cooks cap. She was currently in one of her usual beige wool dresses and a stained white apron knotted around her big hips.

She was telling Ravi to mix whatever he had in his mixing bowl. It sat sloped on his lap where he sat on the table with his legs swinging off.

She kept tapping the back of his hands when he tried to steal one of the freshly baked ginger biscuits she was making for the ball. Trays and trays of them lay cooling on the tabletop. He tried to reach for another one but Mrs McTavish swatted him with a cloth. Telling him to keep his thieving paws off the biscuits and told him to whisk the pastry if he needed an occupation.

Iris smiles at the merry gathering. She walks up to their end of the table. The kitchen maids bob curtseys at her as she sidles past and wishes them a good morning.

She comes to Ravi and cook and the little boy gives her a great big glad smile of welcome. She’s a firm favourite in his eyes ever since the day she helped sneak him out a slice of apple cake behind her back when cooks back was turned. And really, she couldn’t pull rank as a meagre cook and admonish her Ladyship.

“I trust everyone’s behaving themselves here.”

Cook makes an unsure ‘hmmm’ noise as young master Ravi gives her a cheeky smile. He says something under his breath in Hindi.

“English, _bheta_. You know you must practice.” Jomar instructs. Pronouncing beta as _Beh-ta_. The Hindi word for son.

Iris was so enamoured of their heritage and their culture. She didn’t tell their butler that she and Ravi were secretly teaching each other their natives languages - he spoke English so beautifully and he, in return, taught her some sayings and phrases in Hindi.

Jomar sipped his tea and called over his sons interjection to cook in stern Hindi. Burnt almond eyes searing in to his son like harsh needles. Ravi obediently got on with his alotted whisking task as instructed.

“How might I be of assistance?” Cook smiles lightly up at Iris as she slams a big wedge of dough onto the table and starts ramming her rolling pin over the hard slab of dough. Her expert hands making short work of the task.

“I came to get the basket you so lovingly made me for the Zuckermans, Mrs McTavish. Mrs Jones said you prepared one last night.”

“Oh aye.” She recalled. Wiping a hand across her brow. She’d forgotten what with all she had going on.

“In the cold larder. I made a game pie with a whole egg in the middle and some shortbread. Last time I saw those poor wee lambs of hers they looked so terribly listless.” She was referring to the Zuckermans children. The poor things had indeed been afflicted with the chest ailment at first. It was now spreading through the family.

Iris walks through and fetched the basket she spoke of. She almost dropped it when she grasped it. It was relentlessly heavy. In the safety of the enclosed larder in with all the dead game and jars of chutneys and pickles and a whole lot else shelves on the cold thick walls, Iris peels back the cloth and saw the woman had taken pity and supplied a bottle of elderflower cordial and some brown paper wrapped pork on the bone cutlets.

McTavish was a soft touch when she wanted to be. But Iris wouldn’t dare expose her. She kept the kitchen maids and skivvys cowering in fear of her. That’s the way she liked to run her kitchen. Iris won’t hamper upon her system.

Iris steps out with the basket hooked on her arm. She saw Jomar had already slipped the bottles of ointment in there too. He accomplished more in his day before nine o’clock than she thought was humanly possible. He was on a well deserved tea break now. Resting. And well he deserves it. They all have Ranlor’s first social occasion in years to prepare for. The deep breath before the plunge.

“Thank you Mrs McTavish. They’ll be very grateful for the goods I’m sure. I’ll be sure to relay back any well deserved compliments.”

Cook nods. Before she narrows her eyes at one poor kitchen maid down the counters. Metres away. “Mabel I said chop those shallots and you had better get that hollandaise off now before it burns and don’t be thinking I will take kindly to having to make it again if it’s ruined. And If you curdle it again I’ll feed you to the wolves you useless tyke.” She calls crossly down the kitchen to the poor girl in her servitude.

The poor maid quivers and attends the sauce for tonight’s dinner.

Iris looks across to Jomar. “Run.” He mouthed across at her Ladyship.

“Good morning all.” Iris calls over her shoulder as she scurries away. There’s a flurry of footsteps after her and a great deal of cussing. Ravi scarpers out past Iris with a handful of ginger biscuits. Disappearing away to some secret place in the castle to devour them and read his books.

Iris fights off an amused laugh to hear Cook beginning to argue with Jomar about his unruly child. Jomar sighs and answers that he unfortunately agrees with her. Sips some more Assam tea. With the tired tone of an exasperated single parent.

Iris smiles on her way to the stables. She’s wearing her fur boots and her big cloak again. She had too in the snow. Kylo’s right. It was bitter.

She enjoys the brisk frosty walk through the courtyard to the stables. Her heels clicking on the hay strewn icy cobbles. When she gets there one particular horse bays loudly in his stall down the far end of the enclosed stables.

The grooms were sweeping the snow crusted cobbles and the acrid tang of a brazier they had burning stuck to the air. They nodded and tipped their hats at her as she strode past. She bid them hello in turn. Making an effort to learn names. She thought that was important. The head stable lad, Jonas, told her that Sampson had Erland tacked and ready.

Judging by the fuss he was making, the stallion was raring to go out in that snow too. She smiles and soothes him with calm words as she comes to his stall. He shoves his head out towards her, ears pinned back, fluttering his long lashes at his favourite mistress.

“I know. I missed you also.” Iris tells him. He’s snorting and fussing and tries to nibble her hair and noses her cheeks. “Enough young man. We have tenants to see.” She insists. Unlatching the several bolts low down on the door.

Kylo had seriously talked to Jonas about nailing a plank over Erland’s stall door to barricade it shut.

Two times last week he unlatched the lock on his door with his nose and Iris and Kylo came down and found him in the dining room eating off the silver fruit platter Jomar laid out for their breakfast.

Quite how he managed to get in the castle unseen, they had no clue. He stubbornly dug his hooves in when Kylo tried to lead him away. He rolled over - swooned - onto his back and stuck his legs in the air and pretended to play dead on the dining room floor. Tongue lolling. Eyes flicked back white.

Kylo was seething. Trying to drag an 18 hand, 2000lbs of unwilling idiot Percheron out by his bridle, was no easy task.

Eventually some soothing words from Iris and an entire pail of apples was the thing that placated him. He followed Iris like a shot as soon as she clicked her tongue and called after him. Holding out a juicy Braeburn apple in her palm.

He turned upright again instantly and trotted out with his tail arched high. Kylo’s glare at the stallion could’ve killed.

Now, she stepped up and grasped his reins and Jonas helped grab her foot and hoist up to slide up onto his saddle. She rode astride. She couldn’t take any chances in the risky snow. It was just more comfortable. She was assured no one would mind. She thanked him as he handed her the basket. Contents safe on her lap. Erland trekked out the stables slowly. Carrying his most precious cargo.

Erland trots amicably over the cobbles, nickering and snuffing in joy, and he leads calmly out the stone archway of the stables and straight into the woods. Passing the pasture paddocks on their left where no horses were left to graze in this storm. They were all kept inside in this bitter cold. It gave the grooms a chance to check over hooves and teeth and make sure all their colts are well.

Iris loves this wood. Only has she known it a mere few weeks and she’s head over heels. She admires the domineering beauty of the crystals and snow glimmering on the sun.

The tree branches sagging with the weight of the white frost and powder pressing down on it. She likes how when she’s riding Erland, her coat brushes the low hanging limbs and snow dusts her shoulders. The sun blazing on this forest turns the whole landscape into a melting pot of honey frost and gold. Trees bejewelled with ice that catches in the sun. The blue shade of trees reaching long and bleeding watery into the light of the snow underfoot.

Iris loves the sound Erland’s hooves make as they trudge and tumbles through the slushy snow. She’s starry eyed with wonder at the midday sun. And she comes through the woods to the Zuckerman’s little stone and wood timber cottage in no time at all. It slowly comes into view through the trees.

Mr Zuckerman is chopping wood in the outhouse barn. Black and beige chickens peck at the hay strewn around his feet. The chimney of the low cottage with the sagging roof and little windows looks perfectly content. Red bricked with snow dripping off every window ledge and hanging down the overhang of the roof. Ivy swarms the cottage and Iris can see candles flickering in the murky dark of the dim windows.

She’s just come through the wooden fenced threshold that marked their land apart from the woodland, and the round house door opened and Mrs Zuckerman in her apron and shawl opened the door to greet her.

She was a tired frail looking woman, tall and willowy with buttery hair and red cheeks - exertions from her cooking or tending their ailing relative. Wrapped in a beige-biscuit wool gown striped with white tartan. A plum shawl around her slim shoulders. A small child was pasted to her hip. Two more excitedly shout across upon seeing the sight of her coming up their drive on Erland.

She swings her leg over and dismounts her ginormous horse. Slipping down. Her shoes crush into the snow. Mr Zuckerman sees her and kindly comes to lead her horse for a drink and some hay in their barn.

Erland goes willingly - Mr Zuckerman gave him oats last week. That was rival to sainthood in Erland’s eyes. He skips through the fussing chickens and is tended nicely by the farmer.

Iris grasps her basket and walks to the front door. Mrs Zuckerman welcomes her in. Worry and fatigue heavy on her brow. The infant on her hip squalls.

She takes two small plump oranges out of her pockets and gifts one each to the children who cling to her skirts. They seem fascinated and Mrs Zuckerman says she’s kind to be thinking of the children.

Iris smiles. “Of course.” As she moves deeper into the dim house and shuts the door after her to keep in the lovely heat and shut out the nosy cold.

She did love a cottage and Mrs Zuckerman is so houseproud. Every inch of the dark wooden floor is swept and kept ruthlessly clean. The walls are a happy yellow mustard as were the ceilings. Bible embroidered quotes and etchings cover the walls. Sat wonky in their frames.

Iris steps into the kitchen. Seeing their beloved elderly grandfather huddled by the fire. Stooped over and wrapped in blankets and a housecoat. He breaks into a smile and tries to rise when Iris enters the room. Wheezing her a welcome.

Iris steps quickly to him and begs him to remain seated. He was sat by the open door of the iron stove. The amber heart of it blazing away. He sits in a creaking oak chair pulled by the fireside with his cane in hand and a blanket draped over his shoulders. He begins to cough so Iris hands him a saucer of tea from the end table near him. She helps hold it and he sips slowly. Moistening his throat.

Iris used some of her newly learnt german to talk to him. Crouched by his side and helped him. She insisted a wrapped jar of honey and some lemons in the basket would see him right. Mix the two in water and it was soothing for a raw cough. And she bought some tincture for his lungs.

She passes her basket to the eldest daughter of ten and three, Elise. She excitedly unpacks it on the spotless and recently scrubbed kitchen table. Peels the cloth away and they all smile gladly at the contents. Game pie, pork chops on the bone, bottles of sweet berry cordial. A cherry and strawberry pastry pie. Shortbread and unless Iris was mistaken a whole punnet of eggs and some loaves of bread. No wonder the basket was so heavy. Mrs McTavish was a soft touch. Iris is glad of it.

Mrs Zuckerman looks ready to burst into tears. Telling Iris how kind she and his Lordship are. Helping them out like this. Bringing them provisions.

Their family struck by a chest ailment had meant they were behind on their rent. Iris assures her it’s the least they could do. And she hopes to see them at the ball for a glass of punch if they could make it. Children are welcome too. She tells the wide eyed darlings that there will be strawberry cakes and syllabubs for the taking.

Mrs Zuckerman nods tiredly that they’d be delighted to attend and retired for a moment to place the smallest down for her nap in the other room.

Iris helped tend to Mr. Zuckerman the elder. Helped him take some of the ointment she brought. The children eat their oranges in the corner on a wooden bench by the window and a nice calm washes over the kitchen. The snow outside seems friendly and beautiful from homely surroundings such as these.

They talk for a little while. Iris is invited to stay for lunch. Mrs Zuckerman comes in and stirs something atop the stove. The children give her a chorus of big eyes. Their honoured house guest is begged to stay. She nods, tells them she’d adore to stay. Mrs Zuckerman breaks into a frail smile. Telling her it’s the least they could do to repay her.

Iris sits on the bench with all the children as the pot is placed on the table and they are all ladled some delicious smelling stew into small bowls in front of them. They saw the rye bread Iris brought into chunks to mop up the thick gravy sauce. It’s a beef stew, with chunks of onions, carrots and potatoes. It’s simple but delicious. Mrs Zuckerman apologises that it’s not the rich fare her Ladyship is probably used too.

Iris tells them that she actually prefers this kind of food to anything fancy and overdone as most gentry did. She liked stews and casseroles. Such a cheap cut fo beef tasted delicious when cooked with wine and cabbage and vegetables for a few hours on a low heat. She tells them about her family back home, her sisters and her always bugging their cook to make them venison stew with peas and leeks. The children find it very amusing.

Mrs Zuckerman tells Iris that her husband remarked that his Lordship rode incredibly well on the hunt that very morning. Iris nods. “He’s a very strong rider.” She agrees. And tried not to blush too hard.

She finishes everything on her plate and graciously thanks her hosts for sharing the hospitality of their table. She pulls on her coat to leave and bids the family goodbye. Hopes the ointment helps their grandfather. And then she steps out into the snow with a warm belly full of hot food to find her horse. Mr Zuckerman was feeding their goats grain as she left but she waved her thanks from afar.

She mounted Erland - he always lowered for her, never for Kylo which she knew didn’t vex him at all. She still found it to be amusing. She grasps the reins and looked out into the forest ahead.

It seemed eerily still. When she rode up the birds were singing. Deers and rabbits scampered around and blackbirds scurried around in the treetops. Bunnies hopped and darted about in the snow too. Eating the dew off snowdrops. But there’s none of that now. Not a spec.

It’s silent now. Deadly so-

Something uneasy edges at her stomach. She guides Erland forwards. Aware that he was alert too. His ears twitching as he walked on. Distracted too. Jittery and he was never jittery. Unless startled.

Iris leans down and pats his strong neck with a gloved hand as they ride deeper into the woods. Snow crushing under Erland’s big hooves. She promises him yet more oats and a nice brush down when they get home.

Makes her thoughts lighter when she remembers the time in Scotland Kylo had devotedly tried to brush him after a ride out, and Erland kept nicking and biting the brush out of Kylo’s hand and dropping it over the side of the stall out of reach. Kylo ending up getting so vexed he chucked the brush at Erland’s ‘stupid head’ and gave up.

As far as she can tell, they were the only moving things she could spot for miles. Everything looks dead. Even the trees don’t shiver in the breathless snowy air. Unless she was very much mistaken something burned and churned grey far off on her horizon. Gathering storm clouds loomed vast and dangerous. Perhaps a blizzard was coming in fast. Coming to plough through and desecrate the peace of the morning.

“We’ll be home soon Erland. I think there’s a storm coming.” Iris tells to him in comfort - more for her than his.  
  


Erland snorts at her. Iris casts a look through the trees in the distance. A thick fog, a wall of a storm lingered not far off. A cruel breeze slithered through the trees like a grey serpent.

She huddles her coat about herself tighter. When she comes to a crossroads she decided to take the shorter route home.

This took her past the birch forest to the east of the castle. This was also where a large family of Romani travellers had settled their caravans and huts on the land nearby.

Kylo told her of them, he didn’t mind them settling on his land. They were respectful. The men looked for honest work in the village and the women took in washing. They earnt their money fair and square, and he saw no need to evacuate them from his land for that. They were respectful of tradition.

After a few more silent minutes of riding. She had to dismount. There’s a fallen tree far too big even for Erland to jump, she guides him around it. Walking into the thick of the wood and she can see the huts and caravans with their smoking chimneys bleeding foggy and acrid woodsmoke through the trees.

Usually they were out of doors. Children playing in the snow. Women beating rugs or cooking over a campfire. Tending to their goats and geese and chickens. There was one a dark haired boy usually playing a violin. She liked hearing those chirping notes flutter through the trees.

Today she could barely see anyone. The women had pulled up the painted shutters and everyone seemed to be locked away inside. A gaggle of children were playing in the snowy road ahead but that was all. It was usually different. They ran to her when they saw her coming. All excited and laughing. They stroke Erland’s nose as he snuffles down to say hello.

Iris rummaged in her pocket for some coin and wrapped boiled sweets. She places silver in each of their little outheld palms. Gives them a handful of sweets. Tells them to share them out and encourages them to go inside and keep warm out the storm. They ask for her name and she gives it. Lady Iris. They laugh in joy and curtsey and bow to her before they leave in a flurry of energy.

They slowly move into the woods to their huts, and Iris watches over them as they run away. Urged into their homes with their sweets and coin by their mothers. She smiles to herself, going to set off.

She almost shrieks when a cold bony cold hand grabs her wrist hard. She turns, startled in fright.

There’s an old Romani woman behind her. With jewellery laying in the middle parting of her grey long frizzy hair. Silver and jewels sat on her brow. Golden hoops in her ears.

Her face is long and thin and weathered. Her lips are thin and cracked. Lined with more age and creases than an old map. Dark kohl is smeared under her powerful grey eyes. Jewellery and bangles rattle on her wrists. She eyes Iris very keenly with something like worry in her eyes.

She wore all lace and black. A grey shawl and some fur pelts over her shoulders. Dirt was caked into her nails and a chalky scent of dried flowers blooms and lives around this old woman. Lavender or lilac and something dry and mossy like heather. A black shawl of flowery lace hides most of her hair. She was a widow perhaps. In black.

“C-Can I help you?” Iris asks, caught off guard. This woman who was gripping her wrist so hard. Her cold silver rings dig hard into Iris’s skin. A cold clutch of metal. It stung.

The elderly woman doesn’t take her clever eyes off Iris’s bemused face.

“You...” The old woman croaks at her. Her voice is very much accented with strong Romanian. “ _You._ ” She repeated slowly.

Iris doesn’t know if she should be scared. She frowns. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?” She seeks.

Shifting to turn towards her. Letting go of Erland’s reins. She faces to woman. Who suddenly shrunk back, tearing her hand off Iris and backing away as if she were a feral wolf. Almost hissing in pain. Dragging a deep breath as she huddled back.

She was looking at Iris as if she was an unholy demon. She couldn’t take her eyes away.

She stood there and looked down at her hand. The grip the woman clutched onto her still marred her skin. She started to point a bony wagging finger at Iris in warning.

“He watches you. He _sees_ you.” She hisses lowly at Iris.

Acting as if this news was the most terrifying thing she’s ever said. She says her words with severe gravity. She says this as if Iris should be terrified out of her skin.

“Who watches me?” Iris frowns.

“The devil.” The woman spits out.

Iris feels how her blood churns slowly to ice in her veins. Shrieking cold though her like sharp, stabbing nerve pain.

“He sees you. Always he sees you. Hunts you.” She warns as she comes closer.

“He wants your soul for his own...” She adds gravely.

Iris is too stunned to shrink away. The woman comes up and cups her face as she makes a cross from Iris’s forehead with her right hand. Down to her breastbone. And across her shoulders. The Latin cross. Gods cross. A symbol of blessing - or in this case, a protection.

“Gods be with you child.” The old woman stammers. Repeating the gesture. “Gods be with you- and protect you always. May God give you strength to fight the devil.”

Curling something into Iris’s palm. She unlinked one of the many necklaces clattering together from around her neck and pressed it into Iris’s hand.

Moulded her hand around it and whispered something in a language she didn’t know that the wind stole away. She put her dirty index and middle fingers to Iris’ forehead and mumbled a protective chant in a foreign tongue. Closing her eyes and wishing it hard in her native language.

She ripped her hands from Iris and backed away. A look of doom and wisdom in her shining silver eyes. This woman was scared for her.

Iris looked down at the silver medallion she placed in her hand. It was almost worn smooth. On one side there is an etching of a blazing sun trapped in a triangle. Three dots at the top of the triangle. Two stars on the corners and a clover cross below it all.

When Iris looked back up. The old woman was so far away through the trees.

A black huddled shape lost far, far off to the trees and the incoming flurry of blotting snow. She’d appeared out of nowhere and now she’s gone the same way. The wind is whipping so fast around her.

Her terribly brave horse starts spooking. He’s whining and snorting and backing away. Stomping the snow and breathing heavily. Crying terrible awful sounds of distress.

Iris reaches for Erland again and strokes him. Tried to calm him but he doesn’t cease. She mounts up.

She looks back now for the old gypsy woman but she can’t see her at all. The snow is coming so thick. The blizzards moving in.

Erland is shifting - panicking restless and quickly canters them down the road. Whinnying and complaining. His pace soon turns to the fastest gallop he could muster.

Iris tried to calm him but it was next to no use. There’s a mania in his blood and he runs them right back to the castle. All Iris can do is hang on. There’s not much to do to stop this great huge horse once he’s started. He is a resolute creature after all.

She hangs onto the reins as they dash through the snow. He hurdles over logs and sprints up steep snowy banks. The talisman the gypsy woman gave her burning a cold weight in her pocket as her mind struggled to unscramble what this all meant.  
  
  


Her mind is valiantly trying to untangle some sense out of the woman’s warning. She had enjoyed her walk through the woods this morning but now it is an entirely different land-

The wolves are crying to the cacophony of the howling wind. The trees guard no secrets now. The forest seems waiting for something. Something wicked this way comes-

It’s scaring her. The weather churns and snaps at their retreating backs. The forest had emptied as if appraised of something terrible happening where she had not been made aware.  
  


Erland’s skittishness where he never was. This weather. The warning. It all ebbs in her stomach. A pit of clutching worry that she can’t escape from. She feels like she’s running from something and she doesn’t know what- that thought frightens her.

Erland doesn’t even go toward the path leading them to the stables. He runs right up the cobblestone pathway to the courtyard. Leading to the front door. Iris hangs on dearly. Her hair has come loose from the pins and it’s flying at her shoulders just like her coat and her skirts are. Flying out behind her.

His treads echo and clap loud as they come up to the courtyard. Passing under the arch. The sound of good scraping stone shatters off the exposed brick. Iris finally snatched some air into her trembling cold lungs as he finally - mercifully slows down.

Kylo is already here. He was halfway out the courtyard to meet them. Anticipating their arrival. He would have walked to the Zuckerman’s in the gales and the blizzard to fetch her home if that’s what it took.

Her husband is a great hulking shadow in the doorway. He crossed quick to them and held Erland. Barked for a servant behind him to take him to the stables and out the cold. _Now_.

They move swiftly as per the nature of his sharp order indicated.

“Get inside Iris.” He orders up to her now. There’s no love in his face. Just seriousness and concern. It radiates out of his every pore.

It almost hurts to see him look like that at her.

The wind of their fast ride stung her cheeks like beestings. Now they’re red and chapped sore from the elements. Iris lets go of the reins and slides down from Erland as instructed. Kylo holds her arm and guides her swiftly inside.

“What’s the matter?” She asks him with a wobbly voice. She couldn’t help the emotion that crept into her voice. He says nothing and just whisks her very quickly inside.

She caught him casting almost a nervous glance over his shoulder. Right down the cobblestoned bridge of the long ribboning grey drive. The mouth of the entry couldn’t even be seen now. It’s lost to the fog of churning snow and wind.

This was no natural storm.

Iris looks at Kylo as he stares down that drove. The wind ruffling at his long raven hair. His ruthless eyes scanning the horizon. Something hasn’t felt right all day. Something in the shadowed corner of his mind kept springing up. An old neurosis that he batted away. Now he knows he can’t ignore it any longer.

Iris steps right up to him. Grabs his hand.

“Kylo. What is going on?” She demands.

He’s not limp. But he’s as still as a statue. Looking out into the eye of the storm as if it could look back. In a way it was. He could feel the orbs locked onto them. His brown eyes reflect the silver swirling snow.

“Get inside, Iris.” He repeats. Walking them in the door. She stands in the threshold and watched him lock and bolt the door in their wake.

“You need to tell me what on earth is going on before I start to lose my mind.” She makes herself clear. Speaking as plainly as she could manage.

Kylo cups her hand and nods. Keeping his expression neutral and passive. He links an arm around her and leads her to the nearest place where they could be alone. He chooses the dining room. They walk together up the stairs in dreadful silence. When they get to the dining room. Kylo shuts the huge doors after them.

Iris walks quickly down to the settees by the fire at the far end. By the time she gets there. She shrugs off her heavy coat and gloves and the fear is trembling through her so much it bursts out-

She pushes her coat down onto he chair and rummaged for her pocket. Pulling out the tangled medallion of silver. Kylo watches her calmly. Walks towards her.

“There are things you haven’t told me. Things you’ve withheld.” Iris starts calmly. She walks up to him and dangles the necklace in front of him.

He soothingly reaches across and takes it from her. Rubs his big thumb over the worn smooth indents scratched into the metal. A talisman for protection against evil spirits.

“Why would a Romani woman come up to me and give me this?” She asks. Kylo looks up and sees the panic in her expression.

Her moonstone eyes are bright and wild with fear. Her rosebud mouth is a straight pink line and no calm remains in her expression. She’s scared. He can sense her fear like other men could smell perfume.

“What is it and why did she give it to me like it was a holy relic?” She asks. “She looked at me like I was cursed. She told me the devil watches me.” She cries.

Kylo raises his eyes to her. He looks so still and calm it’s making Iris worry even more. The mania and in uncertainty fizzes in her blood like freshly poured champagne.

“It’s a talisman for protection.” He explains. Walking close. Grabbing her hand and pouring the necklace back into her palm. He’s seen many a token for warding off evil spirits before.

Her wrist is hurting. He can feel it burning. He takes her arm and tucks down her sleeve to see a burning red clutch marring her pale skin. He eyes it for a second. Brings her arm up and kisses the back of that wrist.

“Do I need protection?” She asks her husband softly. Terror in her voice.

“Not from me.” He promises her. That’s a more horrifying answer than any he could’ve given.

“Then who from?” She demands to know. If her life was in danger, she thinks she had a right to know what from what’s exact quarter she is to be offered harm.

He swallows before he gives his next answer. “Draegan.”

Her heart squeezes shut. It’s painful. Cloys up her chest.

“Have you told me all there is to know about him?” Iris seeks.

Kylo can’t hide from such an honest enquiry.

“No, my love. I haven’t.” He sighs.

He steps around her after kissing her hand. Goes to the end table to pour them both a drink of something strong. Whiskey. He didn’t often take whiskey. But he needed to imbibe a shot right now. He walks back over with two glasses and hands her one too.

She waits for his explanation to come. She’s buzzing with energy but she sits down by the fire. He stands, leaning over the mantel and staring into the flames. His eyes swirl amber gold with them. Heat and orange kisses it’s flood along his skin.

“What is he? I thought at first he was- like you.” She says.

“He is a vast deal more than what I am.” He tells her as he takes back a sip of burning whiskey.

“He is-“ He thinks about how best to explain the worlds most inexplicable creature.

“He is everything dark and terrible that lurks in the shadows. That, and maybe even more. The hair on the back of your neck that stands up in fear. He is why it exists on mortals. The most ancient and powerful being on this earth. He is ruthless and he has no remorse. He is a demon, and incubus. He’s the closest this earth has to the devil.”

  
“He is the angel of death. Iris.” He sums up.

“And he wants to hurt me? Is this because I married you?” She asked. Tears shining in her big eyes. Kylo steps close and cups her chin.

“I don’t know what he wants. And I’d kill anyone that so much as tried to touch you, my love. Over my dead body will he ever hurt you.” He growls lowly.

Placing his drink down and crouching before her. He reaches for her trembling hand in her lap. Strokes over her wedding rings. Cups through her fingers. His thick fingers struggling to lace through hers they were so big. But he managed.

“I said as much in my marriage vows now didn’t I?” He smiles lightly. Mirth tipping up the corner of his smile.

“As I have given you my hand to hold. So do you also have my body for your protection.”

Iris looks down at their knotted hands. Her favourite sight. “I’d protect you with everything I had, everything in my power until my last breath. My little dove.” He tells her.

He’d seen firsthand the lowliest most desperate people fight to defend their land. He once saw a dying filthy peasant boy take and tug an arrow out from their own body, to defend their horse in battle. Kylo was so struck by that.

When he met Iris, that’s what he realised gut deep searing true love was. Defending those you loved with your bare bleeding hands. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do.

She smiles cause she never doubted that. The sincerity in his words warms up her heart like hot coals just having been stoked. She melts for those loving words of his. The immortal creature pledging her all the devotion and protection he could muster.

“Are we safe?” She finally asks.

“The storm will pass.” Kylo tells her softly.

And he’ll by her side until it passes. She crouched on the floor with him and threw her arms around his neck. Held him tight. He clutched her back and kisses her neck. She sighs into his shoulder. He holds her back and kisses her hair. Snow and woodland and smoke tangled into the autumn tresses.

He was facing outwards. Looking out the windows as the storm rages and carved around them. Beating against the castle walls like a banshee.

The storm will pass. It will. It must.

He just hopes it will mean that a tall pale stranger won’t come knocking after it does-

~


	25. Apparitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Better the devil you know-

Dawn blazed a fierce spitfire orange over Ranlor Castle.

A strident winters morning took a hold of the landscape. Iris found plenty of peace in her current surroundings. Enclosed in the warm leafy green hold of the orangery. One of her favourite rooms in this whole castle. Its whole environment hugged her on entry.

She sighs happily as she walks into the place. Shutting the large glass and wood door after her. A flat wooden trug under one arm. She takes a deep breath of the stuffy space. And it’s all nectar and warm wet nature.

As she walks through some bushes flutter to life as herds of butterflies take off and float jerkily to the ceiling at being disturbed. Little songbirds scurry under the hedges and startle in her wake. Kylo told her over the years some holes in various windows allowed the little creatures to get in. Sheltering from the hateful ferocity of the snow.

It was a large space. It brought her to mind an illustration she had once seen of Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London. A place she’d once glimpsed etched in black and white in the pages of a book. The huge towering white and glass edifice that baked under the sun and nourished to muggy warmth, the exotic life within.

Ranlor’s orangery could almost compete. It is a huge space carved out especially to be swarmed with green life. Pillars sink down from the high high ceiling. Tropic warm heat is stuffy and nectar and sickly fragrant green. The roof is entirely made of glass windows that let in the light of the sun that’s just starting to warm copper through the panes. The walls are huge Georgian arched windows of Palladian design.

In here, in this gorgeous space, there are trees she’s never seen before, shipped in from exotic lands. Plants in colours she’s never heard of. Vines cling to every column and threaten their clinging green fingers at the roof. Sun dapples green and amber through the strangled plant space up high above.

There is a mosaic tile walkway leading through the space. But it is tumbled and covered in patchy moss. Nature took over and it stayed in charge. She learnt that this space was largely neglected but for its hot house uses, growing flowers and some fruits. Jomar told her he had a particular fondness and took great nurturing care of the fruit trees in the far south corner. A mango tree spawned from a seed he brought here from India as a young boy when he was no more than Ravi’s age. Now there are three mango trees growing here.

Some Grecian statues stand guard in the place. Dotted around. Surrounding the inset creamy marble pond and fountain. The water of the huge hexagonal pond is forest green and sprouting white lilies from its surface.

This is where her Ladyship can be found most afternoons. Curled up on one of the numerous stone or iron benches with a heap of pillows and a book. Listening to the birds chirp. The water spat at the fountain and trickling slowly to the surface.

Iris was up at the crack of dawn like a shot. There’s so much to do. So much to think about. Her brain is a thousand tumbling jumbled thoughts that never ceases to churn out something else to pay heed too for the ball. Now just one day away. It was only tomorrow night and last minute preparations have all hands to the pump.

She sneaks out of their bedchamber leaving a slumbering husband behind. She parted pressing a kiss to the prickly unshaven plain of his cheek as he slept.

He doesn’t stir and she runs a hand through his hair before she slips away. The black peppermint scented silk of his tresses twining through her fingers.

The dim mouldy red of the walls are shrouded in shadow where the drapes are still pulled. For a man who slept so little he certainly slept deeply for those meagre few hours. She tiptoes out the small gap she creaks open in the door and attends to fixing herself up for the day in the duchess suite.

Splash of icy water across her face and brushing her teeth. She dresses quietly and swiftly. Only hears the rustle of the fabric of her clothes as she pulls it on. And the flutters of chirps and calls of the birds in the woods below the great stone castle.

The innocent lovely little calls seep through the thick stone walls. A crimson dawn, spun gold and bursting bruising reds creep up just behind the horizon of dark spiky woodland. The snow is turned to copper.

She manages to dress herself easily. Maids could not be spared their duties today and Iris didn’t have the time to fuss over her hair or her clothes. She buttons her petticoats at the back fastenings of her shoulders. Over her stays and chemise. Slips on her lilac day dress. A wrap dress with the closures tying just under the bosom.

A beautiful garment of violet cotton. Her dressmaker said violet went beautifully well with dark brown hair and he was right. The spicy plum purple of it was a jolt of energy to her boring wardrobe. She felt energetic today. She tugged it on happily. No longer is she a plain eldest daughter in boring neutral gowns. She’s a beloved wife whose husband lavished her in silks and jewels. She’s still getting used to his spoiling of her.

Her muddy hair she brushes the knots out of, trying not to wince too much and sweeps it back off her face in an artless arrangement that took mere seconds to produce. Snip of muslin and a handful of pins and she slips her feet into her slippers and noiselessly heads downstairs. She left half of it clipped back the rest spilled down her shoulders.

She consulted her busy housekeeper - when she eventually found her - and offered to collect blooms for the vases to be placed around the ballroom from the orangery herself. And so she took herself away to complete said task.

She takes a quaint stroll through the lovely orangery listening to the birds sing their calls. Flowers sweep at her skirts and catch on her hair as she passes them by.

She reaches down to the shrubbery by one window and plucks out a lavender stalk. Lifts it to her nose and inhaled the plain spice of its scent. The little purple buds brimming with flavour.

She walks to the fountain and sets the trug down on the side for a moment. Sitting on the low marble wall that surrounded it. Looking down into the calm still of the water. Seeing the paper white lilies on the surface uncurled, waiting for the warmth of the sun. Iris smiles and reaches over to touch one of them. Leaning over careful not to trail her hair in the murky water.

She drags a fingertip over the wet shiny surface of the lily pad. The sun rises behind her. Starting to filter through the warm glass in the ceiling high above.

She feels it heat the back of her neck. A lovely delicious warmth sliding along her skin. Like the knowing touch of a lover.

Suddenly she feels it- a sense. A premonition. A flush of longing and memories, or desires, slithering under her skin.

Sour Cherry wine on her tongue, glide of velvet on bare skin. Hungry, dominant kisses pressed to the corner of her lips. Teasing at the seam of her mouth with a cruel smile. A slender pale hand inundated with smooth silver rings, running cool and hot up her back.

It shudders through her and she’s glad she’s sitting down. Her knees go suspiciously weak. Trembling. She gasps for a breath as she flushed from her bosoms, up her neck to her cheeks. Heat floods her blood.

This had once been his favourite place in the castle too. Many an hour he spent in here. Amongst the life and the growing greenery of things.

In the other side of the pond she’s looking into she catches a reflection. She isn’t alone.

Oh. His mortal. His sweet little spark. So fiery. So full of life. His little ember. She’s _never_ been alone.

She thinks she has her whole life. Settled into a family that callously showed her so little regard. But she’s never been unwatched or unloved. So long as she has been on this earth, he had watched her. Kept her safe. Kept his topaz eyes fixed on her - knowing what was coming her way.

Knowing _who_ she was intended for-

Their fates were intertwined. Writ long ago as each other’s. They belonged.

The ghost of his memory is tied to this place. The closer she gets to Kylo, to her husband, the closer she’s drawn to him also. He made Kylo. Traces of him live in her husbands bloodstream. Fusing them all as one. Linking them.

Only Draegan is cursed. He must watch her from afar. There’s barbs and brambles thick between him and Kylo as per their last parting. That painful awful ground cannot be retrod without blood being drawn.

Iris blinks. This can’t be possible- her eyes are playing tricks. Maybe this old castle had ghosts- she can’t be seeing this.

She sees his reflection, there in the mushy green of the ponds surface.

Rippling with the fountain in the middle disturbing they calm surface. The icy hair brighter than the heart of the sun. Long silk of it lapping his shoulders. Spilling down his back. The angular carve of his defined face so brutal and devastatingly handsome. High cheekbones sharp as carved granite. Almond shaped eyes bluer than bluebells and powder sky and stormy sea. Soaked in ancient wisdom.

His lips and his smile are things of pure brutal beauty. Pink like roses are his lips but his mouth holds a feral sharp smile ready to cut. Cupid’s bow mouth that looked supple soft but promised only danger.

She can see him. As real as the place they’re standing in. She can see the sunlight sheening off his robes. Sinking into the plush midnight velvet of his coat. Marigold yellow light kissing along the supple blue.

He smiles at her. Tiny arches form in the corner of his lips. She can almost hear the sparkling lull of his voice. Soft, patient, low voice. As addictive to listen to as a melody plucked from a lyre. She’s so certain she can smell jasmine and wood sage and bursting berries when none of those things grow in here. The smell that clings to him. One she’s scented before in her drifting hazy dreams.

She darts up. Looking around. There’s nothing.

No one here but her. The reflection is gone. The birdsong and the butterflies and the plants is all that’s left. She scans around. Nothing hides between the plants. Nothing has disturbed the air but her rising to her feet. The fountain spitting and pattering the ponds surface is the only sound she can hear.

She looks back down into the water. And there’s nothing but the smudgy green water studded with lilies. She watches as they unfold as a huge shaft of sunlight breaks in through the roof. Spinning their white petals into a fiery amber.

Not able to desist in what she saw - perhaps she’s going mad. She remarks to herself as she walks around the pond and around by the sunken flower beds and the fruit trees. Weaving under branches and past the apple trees and the mulberry tree. Ducking under branches and pushing them away. They rip and snag her clothes and hair.

She can’t find a thing. No reason as to the snowy spectre she glimpsed out the corner of her eye.

She walks over to where the wildflower border blooms bright and full. Hopping with insects and bees. She runs her hand over the pristine beauty of the soft petals there. Lavender, roses, lilies, peonies and too many other blooms to name. All sprouting from the earth and spattered with water where the gardener had tended to them last night.

She doesn’t remember there being quite so many blue flowers when she was in here yesterday. There are clouds and clouds of them here now. Bluebells, poppies, hydrangeas, delphiniums and hyacinths. All crowding the gaps in between the other peach, orange and red flowers.

A parting gift maybe? From the ghosts of Kylo’s lost love?

She walks over to the flowers and crouches down in front of them. Gently touched the bluebells. Cradling the delicate things in her hand. It almost seemed a shame that she had to cut them down for the ball. But needs must.

She ignores the feeling shimmering in her bones. Unsettling her. She pushes it aside. Walked to fetch her trug and a pair of gardening scissors and begins to trim some of the flowers and lay them in the cradle of her basket.

She works until the sun blazes high in the sky above. Throwing yellow gold over the snowy landscape. Heat beginning to butter up the air in the orangery. Kissing the tips of the trees. Nourishing sublime sunshine pouring in. The air now smells like sickly roses and sweet sweet floral nectar. Iris works diligently. Gathering flowers in large bunches and putting them in the buckets of water the gardener left for her. She worked and trimmed the stems and tried her best to arrange them in styles that was pleasing to the eye.

After a couple hours of arranging and cutting and she had several large pails filled. Bursting colours and ready to display for their guests. She grabs her trug - she’s kept aside a few blooms to place in the vase on her bedside. Some lilies, lavender, tulips and roses.

She fiddles with a stalk of lavender as she heads back along the sun drenched room, out into the corridor and back into the castle. Mourning the loss of her favourite place to be. But she has responsibilities to take heed of, as much as she’d like too. She can’t hide away all day in amongst the shrubbery.

She heads to the ballroom where a flurry of activity bursts in the big space. Noises of cleaning and footsteps gaggle up to the ceiling. She’s barely stepped foot in the room and eight million tasks and questions are thrusted in her direction.

Things like, whether the candle holders looked correct where they had been placed by the windows. If the silver was polished pleasingly enough. If the gold draperies over the windows were hanging correctly, and whether to place the brandy table to the north corner? Or to the south corner? And whether the tipsy cake was a little too tipsy, and whether or not Cook should make another one-

On and on, and on, the questions they come thick and fast and frequent they didn’t falter. A tumbling tirade of enquiries.

She could barely walk two paces without being accosted. Was the white soup too thin? Burnt? Too watery? She never suspected Mrs McTavish to be a fickle minded woman but suddenly their stout scottish cook had taken the time to become one.

Iris is dragged onto the kitchen where the atmosphere is as tense as a battalion of soldiers facing their first battle. She tastes everything twice - assures her the soup is delicious and the biscuits are excellent. And the game pie looks as if it was crafted by an artist. It all gets Iris’s blessing.

She ducks out the kitchen and winces hearing cooks harsh barks to her maids flourish in her wake.

She makes a note to send the kitchen girls some extra wage or some days off for their bravery. She’s back up the ballroom to talk to her butler and more questions are thrown at her. Did the musician’s corner need rearranging? Did she want more chairs brought in? Was the floor scrubbed clean enough?

Iris soothes and calms her frenzied staff. She helps sort and order the chaos of nerves. Ranlor hasn’t played host to a ball in several hundred years. According to Jomar. It’s a nice change of pace compared to the sleepy winters they’re all used too. Inbetween pats the the heads of lumbering wolfhounds - Brutus and Zeus follow her around the ballroom.

She’s used to the clack of their paws on the marble trailing after her. She narrowly avoids treading on Caligula’s paws when he decided to join in and follow after Iris like a lost baby duckling following its mother.

She helps Mrs Jones move some chairs. Straightens out the linens on the tables. Makes sure all the candle votives are filled.

She and her dog entourage go into the anteroom and across to the dining room. Jomar is ruthlessly directing footmen to place the silver on the table to be polished. And he will be merciless in his inspection. From the biggest terrine to the smallest fork. He will oversee everything. Iris trusts him and his measuring slide rule and sharp eyes are up to the task.

Back and forth she goes, zipping in-between the two rooms. Answering yet more questions. Helping, advising. She’s rushed off her feet. She’s placing tapered white candles on a votive rack to go by the window, stood side by side with Mrs Jones, passing the time of day and discussing what bedrooms should be aired in case some very drunk guests have to avail themselves of a room, when she hears some odd whispering come from about them.

Iris peers around her. Worrying that her pale spectre from earlier was lingering and preying on her attention.

The only maids in the room now are in the far corner airing the musty gold draperies and polishing the glass windows to a high shine. This great dusty room is dusty no longer. No more is it a hallowed hall in a vampire lords long forgotten castle. Now it smells of soap used to scrub the tiles. And the punchy scent of waxy polish used on the candlesticks dotted everywhere. It dances on the air and floats up gently to the moulded baroque ceiling.

It comes again. A gentle whisper. And a papery scratch. A page being turned.

Iris steps back and looks at the large covered table they’re standing in front of. She sinks to her knees and lifts the snowy linen to see they had a little guest hiding away under the safety of the tablecloth. A fort in opportune making.

Iris smiles as she remained crouched. Smiling at the little figure sat cross legged on the very polished floor in his clever hiding place. “And what do you do so secretly under here, young man?” She asks with a smile. Holding up the linens.

“Learning how to dance. I don’t know how- I’ve never been to a ball.“ Ravi offers up to her with a quiet sort of upset curiosity. Jabbing his little fingertip at a spot on the page.

He spins and shows her the enormous thick book he had sloped in his lap. Iris knelt fully on the floor. So she could see what he was reading. So she could better see the illustration he pointed to on the page. She makes out the drawing of a man and a woman posed ready to dance in 1700’s garb. The woman and her powdered wig and the man in dainty hose and heels. She sees the illustration is called the Quadrille.

Iris smiles down at him. “If you’d like to learn. I could teach you. The Quadrille is very easy.” She offers.

Ravi frowns up at her. “It looks difficult.” He counters with a worried expression on his earnest little face.

“It’s much easier to learn in step than from a book.” She promises.

Iris holds out her hand to him. He gingerly takes it. She leads him gently out from under the table. Brushing off her skirts form the spotless floor - force of habit. She takes his hand and walks him into the middle of the ballroom floor. Right at the centre. The maids and the housekeeper watch on with curious smiles.

Iris gets Ravi in the centre of that glittery gold and baroque ballroom. Tiles shining shimmering shining sunlight up into their steps that echo and clap up to the ceiling. She poses them facing each other.

“Now. First and foremost. A gentleman always bows to a lady. Having first asked her if she will dance with him...” She tells. Ravi holds his arm out and arches into a very courtly bow.

Iris grasps her skirts very gently and sinks low into a curtsey. “Why I’m charmed, sir.” She insists with a smile. “And the Lady always curtseys back. As is proper.” She explains. Sinking to her knees.

“This usually works with more couples in a square formation but we’ll make do...” Iris laughs.

Ravi is ready and eager to learn. She sometimes wondered that he must get lonely up here in this gigantic castle - he certainly doesn’t suffer for an abundance of love. He is revered fondly by everyone, when not up to his usual mischief. But still she reckons he must feel quite isolated. When his father is working and as much as a friend and mentor Kylo is to him, he most sometimes ache for people his own ages with his own interests. Iris will always spare a moment in friendship for this boy.

She teaches him the steps in two-four time. They come forwards and then go back, and repeat, and on the second she holds out her hands and he takes them and they twirl and go to their original positions. They then join hands with an imaginary partner to her left and his right and walk forwards together.

Iris laughs when a figure suddenly joins hands with her as they come forwards. A cloud of coconut and mango oil is her biggest clue. He hops into their game.

She’s whirled around to see Jomar falling into step with her. When Iris walks back around Jomar joins hands with her and leads her across from Ravi. She can hear Mrs Jones laughing at them.

Ravi laughs at his father. Calling out to him in Hindi. Jomar twirls around as does Iris and walks across to take his sons hand and lead him in the dance as Iris shows them the steps. He daintily points his toes. Iris shows them how to stop and raise their hands. Or kick out their legs, fashionable regency additions to the dance.

By the time they finish. Two housemaids and a couple of footmen have joined in. And Cerberus jumps along too. Getting in the way. Almost getting his paws trod on.

Mrs Jones is wiping away tears of mirth around her eyes in seeing them all dance and leap around with each other.

The elder woman stands there, putting aside her task of arranging some roses and lilies, and truly sees how much joy and life Iris has bought to this place.

She’s been a housekeeper to Lord Ren for going on twenty six years now. She’s seen this house draped in darkness with very little to recommend it. His Lordship kept to his rooms. They never used the ballroom. Even less did they expect or receive guests.

Kylo was a civil man to care after. He paid his staff well and hardly ever had a flare in temper. But, he ultimately kept to himself. He had his hounds, his hunting and his tenants and that seemed to occupy his time.

She couldn’t be more glad his Lordship has now found a woman like Iris to be the reigning Lady of Ranlor.

She never expected that a simple wintry excursion to England could result in such happiness as this; there being dancing again in the ballroom.

Laughter and life echoes out in these hallowed halls. She knows Lord Ren is a horse of a different colour - but she admires how Iris’ mere presence seems to breathe simple mortality back into this house. Makes it less a series of cold stone walls they live in. She makes it a happy community to thrive and work it. A home.

It’s such a nice thing to admire. Watching silliness rife amongst her staff including her ladyship herself. She’s dancing with the butler, his son, the footmen and the dogs. She certainly didn’t stand on ceremony and act distantly or coldly.

She’ll thank every star in the heavens and in her prayers at night that Kylo found a woman like her. In many ways, she wonders how they were ever without her. Her kind soft ways of doing things. Approaching people. Mrs Jones thought that was more noble than any title or landed gentry she knew of.

The raucous dance comes to a end. A massive swell of applause shatters into the large ceiling room via the anteroom and the double doors where people had gathered to watch the spectacle of country dancing unfold.

Iris smiles at her partners and claps heartily for them. For Jomar and Ravi. Red cheeked and breathless she was happy to see them elated. Jomar ruffles his sons hair.

“Maybe you shall dance at the ball, bheta. Now you’ve had practice... though you shall be in bed before the dancing starts. It will be well past your bedtime.” Jomar warns.

Iris smiles down at him. “Well. Time enough to sneak a strawberry cake from the dining room table master Ravi. I won’t tell if you won’t.” Iris smiles.

Respecting his fathers wishes of course. But he practiced his dancing and was so curious about seeing his first ball hosted in his own home. Iris can’t deny that.

Jomar smiles at her kindness.

Were she a lesser woman of no feelings she wouldn’t have so embraced having an errant child running about the place. About _her_ castle.

Let alone one as prone to mischief as his son can tend to be. Reading his books in odd places. When one of the animals he finds in the woods escapes in the kitchens

\- last week it had been a family of mice he kept in a hatbox that somehow got loose under the kitchen table. Sent the kitchen maids fleeing to stand on higher ground with their skirts pinched in their hands shrieking about mice.

Clarence, the marmalade coloured kitchen cat who existed solely for the purpose of eradicating vermin, merely watched them run around the flagstone floor as the banshee wailing of the maids continued. He licked his paws and groomed his ears and had no cares in the world.

The shrieking managed to summon not only footmen, armed with shoes and fire pokers, but also his Lordship and her Ladyship put their studies to come and see what on earth the fuss was all about.

Ravi had been almost paralytic with laughter. Until he realised a very angry father stood in the doorway with thunder in his warm walnut eyes, arms crossed, and Kylo’s stern look could rival black ice.

They eventually rounded up all the mice and herded them up. All there for the count. Newton, Galileo, Aristotle and Copernicus all safe home in their old hatbox. Iris smiled at Ravi’s scientific names for them. She even got on her hands and knees and managed to entice and catch Copernicus with a few biscuit crumbs in her hand.

That’s when Jomar truly admired her- when she was on a dusty kitchen floor trying to talk his sons pet mice out from a cobwebbed corner. She had done it because she couldn’t bear to see the pain on Ravi’s face if he saw his beloved animals came to harm.

That’s when he knew she was a truly different woman to any other spoilt English girl who Kylo could have chosen. He had all of that Hampshire county fawning at his feet. Weak at the knees thanks to his vampiric senses. He could seduce scores of girls - but as soon as he had seen Iris, he had pursued her and found his greatest happiness.

The whole of Ranlor would be remiss not to see what a fine choice he’d made in her. He didn’t just gain a new employer. He’d gained a friend.

In the present. He patted his sons shoulder as they stood facing her Ladyship after their impromptu dance lesson.

“Hmm. On reflection, I think we might be able to allow a brief glimpse of your first ball. So long as you go and stick your head in your books and get on with your mathematics tutoring for now. Don’t think you’re off the hook for the mice incident yet. Bheta.” Jomar say’s down at his son.

Arching a wry brow that let him know his fatherly word was the final say on the matter.

Ravi hung his head but ultimately agreed. Bowing to Iris and muttering to himself in Hindi before he left. Slipping off, trudging in the direction of his bedchamber and his studies.

“A bit of practice. I’m sure he’ll make a very proficient dancer.” Iris winks at Jomar. Going back to tend to her tasks.

“He takes after his mother in that sense. I have two left feet.” Jomar assures. Putting his hands behind his back and smiling at Iris. “She loved to dance. I imagine she’s be very grateful that he gets a steering feminine hand to teach him.”

Iris felt the keen love of that comment. “I’m happy to teach him any day he wishes. My mothers comportment lessons may yet come into their uses - I sure as hell pay it no mind. Someone may aswell have joy of the dances I took great care and pain to learn.” She says.

Jomar’s smile reaches right up to his warm eyes. He bows and nods. “If you’ll excuse me. I’m going to go and be strict and shout at some footmen in the other room now.” He japes with mirth. Moving off to inspect how the silver polishing endeavour was coming on.

“Very good.” Iris smiles as her tall willowy Butler moves off. Off to issue orders and be bossy. Knowing he won’t really be strict unless necessary. His all seeing precise eyes would lend themselves well to whatever task he tackles.

Mrs Jones smiles as Iris comes back to her side at the table. Starting on another arrangement. “I think master Ravi has a soft spot for you. My Lady.” She predicts. Iris picks up a white rose and hands it to Mrs Jones to place in the baluster vase they’re arranging.

“I’m quite partial to him myself.” She insists with a smile. The women quickly fall into other conversation regarding the ball.

Before long, after a few more chores are undertaken. Iris quite literally runs out of things to do. Everything seemed set- Ranlor was ready to host its ball. She checks on every last detail in Jones handbook. Ticks everything off the list they made.

She’s now running on empty and all she wants now is a comfy chaise and a tray of tea. She hasn’t sat down all day and her aching feet are letting her know it.

She tells her housekeeper she’s retiring to her study or her bedchamber for some rest and to skim a few pages of a novel. And she was quite desiring to seek out her husband too. Not having seen him since daybreak.

She smothers a yawn in her hand as she heads along the dim hallways leading to the bedchambers. Perhaps a lazy lounge on their bed was in order. After her startling spectre this morning. She found herself looking over her shoulder more than was usual.

She’s calmed a bit now. But a perturbed feeling had circled behind her back all morning. Like treading deep black water and discovering one wasn’t alone. Hopefully the demons of that nature were laid to rest now.

She’s walking along the corridor leading to the grand marble stairs and suddenly she isn’t. She gasps and her world spins.

A hand is around her throat. A muscled arm pulls her where it wants her. She is pinned into a corner. Shoved into an alcove.

Back rudely slammed into the shadowy patch of the wall. Hidden by some statue, some large red draperies and a large candelabra-

And a big vampire.

Her scream dies in her husbands mouth. Muffled into his teeth. He hauled her around and put her where he wanted her.

Slid a hard thigh to rasp at her lilac skirts, sliding right in-between hers. Rubbing up against her pretty cunt through her skirts. His hand spanned her entire throat and he squeezes just gently enough to apply a spine tingling-weakening degree of pleasure. Licking and kissing into her mouth. Smirking as he feels her realisation that this was for pleasure start to bleed into her body.

Her hands don’t know how to be at such a predatory ambush. They press to the wall behind her. His front is pressed solidly to hers in all its brute glory.

She spoke and gasped into his mouth. He frightened her with his suddenness. Her voice betrayed this. “Oh kylo-“ She began.

She knew now that he liked his love making on the rougher side. She never thought she could come to crave it too. Yet here they are- both growing amorous off the feral nature of his attack. The air about them sparked with contact.

He pulls back from unleashing a fierce kiss on her. Worrying her bottom lip with his teeth. He growls. It comes from the dark deep animal pit in his chest. It’s so low and dangerous it raises the hair on her neck to prickle painfully to attention.

“I need my wife.” He lusts into her ear. Muggy heat of his words slithering down her neck. Making her flush.

He stabs kisses and suckles and bites onto her pale neck. His hand is still wrapped around her throat.

“Here?” She squeaks as he bites around her thumping pulse. She moans louder, sensual and supple, then comes his teeth. He hums and feels it jerk in his mouth. Licking the spice of her plain skin off her neck. He adored her perfume but when she doesn’t bother or forgets to put any on- the bare skin drives him into pure mad animosity.

“Anyone could walk by and see-“ She frets. A footman or a maid. Heaven forfend Ravi- or Jomar.

She truly gasps loud when one of his huge hands covered her breasts. Snuck under the flimsy wrapped bow of the fastening and his thumb edged down the cup of her chemise and stays to nudge over her hard nipple.

He halos the round little knot of it with his thumb. Hard like a cherry stone. So badly wanting to taste her. Her nipples always grew harder in his mouth when he sucks and slurps on these perfect tits like a randy schoolboy.

“I don’t care if they see, Dove.” He whispers dirtily onto her collarbone. Sucking that pretty patch of paper thin skin a raw bright red. Vampires teeth rake at her skin like pearlescent knives.

If anyone should stumble across them entangled like this - the onlooker would retreat with blushes before Kylo would. He’s damn sure of that.

Such a pretty dress she’d put on today. He admires the crush of the sheer lilac fabric as he pulls back only a little to bunch it up in one hand. Chuckling as she realises he’s lifting her skirts, petticoats and chemise.

Fingers walking along the orchid purple fabric, up up and up, as he scrunches it in one hand. She sags back into the wall and sighs as one cold palm strokes up the inside of her thigh. Touching to the melting warm tender skin. Pretty pretty pink and soft as butter under his rough fingers. She melts for him. Panting. Cheeks red. Eyes bright moonstone.

She whines when his fingers have no trouble in easily finding her cunt. His fingertips push through her silky lips. Smirking at the sticky satin wet he finds. How wet she was already. It makes him growl - again. His cock springs up hard against his falls. Protesting to be let out and sink into her heavenly walls.

“Look at you dove. Simply dripping down to your knees, for your husband.” He smiles against her ear. They’re pressed so close his body pins her skirts to her hips. His other hand resumes it’s hold on her throat.

Lord, she’s a pretty sight like this. Neckline and bodice of her gown all mussed and untidied. Hair free. Neck stabbed with rose petals red kisses and bruises from his mouth. Throat decorated with his hand like a necklace ringing it.

She can hear the slick slush of his fingers moving in her. Pushing around her wetness with his index and middle finger. Skirts pinned up. He was pawing at her like they were trysting lovers. Not man and wife.

He was acting like some dangerous, filthy stranger shoving her into a darkened corner at a ball, and stuffing his hand up her skirts and right into her pussy. Fucking her on his fingers til she cries and spurts her climax - her cream and wet spilling all over his hand.

He leans in and licks into her mouth again. A messy wet kiss where their teeth clash. Humming into her mouth with pleasure and bliss.

Breaching her gorgeous heat with his cool fingers. Twisting and thrusting until he finds those secret soft spots that make her quiver.

He squeezes around her neck and feels the breath trickle out her mouth as he smiles hot and savage against her lips. Meanwhile, he fucks his fingers sharply into her. Plunging deep and ramming into her sex. Finding every single spot that made her scream and shiver.

Her thighs quake around him and she scrabbles to hold the back of his waistcoat. Her fingernails slipping on the satin back of it. She throws her head back when he finds somewhere deep inside her.

Somewhere irresistible and too good. A sharp pleasure tears through her lower body. She doesn’t need to look to know his eyes are glowing at her. He rolls her clit under his thumb. Makes sure to rub along her front walls with a curl of his fingers. She shudders-

“Oh god” She whines pitchily. Even to her own ears she sounds pathetic. It makes him chuckle. Low and cruel sounding in the back of his throat.

“I think you love being shoved into a corner and fucked on my fingers. Darling wife.” He assessed. Biting his lower lip in a smile. “Taking me over and over until you cum.” He sighs.

“You’re running down your legs dove. I’d give anything to sink to my knees and suck this sweet pussy into my mouth. You know you taste so _so_ delicious.” A very dirty thought suddenly echoes in his head.

“I can’t wait to taste you when your courses come. I’d you’ll let me- Two of my favourite things combined.” He drawls. Sucking on her lips again as he huffs words into her skin. Melting onto her mouth. He drags her into a hungry kiss again and tastes how much that idea makes her shudder.

Of her husband throwing her legs over his shoulders and lapping her up when her monthly bleeding starts.

He feels her clamp down around him. Cunt snapping down on his fingers. As if trying to suck him in that much deeper.

Desperate and urgent, he takes his fingers out of her and lets her watch as her sucks on them. Spit stringing to his fingers as he shoved them in deep again. The tang of her pussy on his lips and tongue.

He devours her mouth and lets her taste it. He took her lips hungrily and powerful. They moan and huff and pant onto each others entwined tongues. Sharing spit and the intimate taste of her. Gripping into each other desperately.

Tears begin to build in the corner of her eyes at such sharp desperate pleasure. So brutal. So blissful. She can’t tell which she’s crying at more-

“That’s it my love. Tighten up and clench that perfect little cunt for me. I want to feel your cum dripping down my fingers-“ He sighs into her. Teeth scraping her lower lip.

He shifts the angle. Letting go of her neck and dragging one thigh, hoisting it up to settle over his hip. Grinding his hard cock into her hip with his tented breeches. She sighs loud when he does. All breath and screams.

Rubbing and rutting like they are animals who couldn’t wait to be alone. Couldn’t spare the seconds to duck into a parlour and have privacy. _Oh no_. Instead they’ll rut and fuck and do their pleasuring out here in the open where anyone could wander by and see.

“I’m going to have you so brutally tonight my love. I won’t be gentle or nice. I’m so hard for you right now, I won’t have the patience to be a kind lover. I’m going to spread you across our bed and fuck you so deep and hard-“ he groans himself at the visual he’s painting.

He’s going to slide so deep she’ll feel him all the way up in the low pit of her belly.

“Pound that gorgeous swollen cunt with my cock until you beg me to cum. And then I’m going to teach you how to ride me. Oh yes, dove. I can’t wait to see how you look astride me. How to sink down on me and roll those curvy hips over my cock until you can’t take anymore. I will have fucked you so full of me.” He pledges. Then he chuckles.

“And I won’t stop til we both fall down exhausted. I’ll fuck you until you can’t take another drop of me.” And when he has done that, he’ll fuck that creamy mess of them back into her with his fingers.

“I’ll try not to make you too sore. Don’t want you standing there tomorrow greeting all our guests with a ache of me still throbbing between your legs.” He promises. Shifting his fingers and feeling her squelch and drip over his fingers. Right down his wrist. Soaking into his shirt sleeve.

“Cum my love. Please _cum_.” He orders softly in her ear. Voice tickling her neck as he rides his hand into her and grinds his hips too.

“Be a good girl for your husband and soak my hand.” He coo’s.

Her fingers dig into his shoulders and her breath comes in bursts and starts. Her lungs shrivelled up and she forgot how to breathe. She can only gasp and cry out for him. He drags her mouth to his and swallows every moan. His cock rubbing hard hard hard into her hip. He huffs at the sweet friction but he simply adores the way she starts to orgasm for him.

Sticky satin wet of her trembles over his plunging fingers as her quivering thighs fight to snap shut around him. Her hips jerk and ride his hand to ease out every last thrill of pleasure. He hums satisfied into her mouth. Feels her groans sink onto his tongue as she whines and cums.

He eases his fingers slower. Taking his thumb off of strumming her clit and rolling it to drive her insane. She sighs into his mouth as he retreats his hand from being wedged between her legs. An obscene wet sound and so much slick pouring down her trembling legs.

He smiles into her neck. Mouthing kisses over her shoulders. Up to her ears. “You soaked right down to the tops of your stockings, little dove.” He chuckles.

Running his wet fingers through the beautiful thatch of curls on her cleft. He loves dragging his sticky fingertips, his tongue, his lips, over and through those gorgeous curls.

When he goes down on her her nuzzles his nose there. Loves that clean bare scent that clings to her pussy, to the backs of her knees. To her inner thighs. He loves it all.

Her skin hums bright with that botanical rose soap she uses. It’s like breathing in those damask rose fields he once wandered through in Turkey. Sickly sweet flowers filling the air. She coats his tongue like rose oil. Only she was ten times sweeter when she drops open her legs for him.

He stays supporting her into the wall. Keeping her pinned until the heady afterglow of climax wears off- reality came fracturing back to her in slow degrees.

She surely regains her head. Panting and red cheeked. Sticky between her legs. He licks his fingers clean and shared the taste with her on his greedy tongue.

He pulls away and lets her skirts settle back over her hips. The rasp of them resettling over her body. His eyes shine promiscuous with that fact her bodice was still messed and rumpled from his feeling her nipples.

He hums growling kisses into her collarbones. Plucking sweet wet trails along her skin. His dark curls fall over his forehead as he nuzzles into her sweaty neck. Hands taking her hips.

One of his arms scoops around her little waist and pressed her into his hard body. All those slabs of his muscles kissing onto her softness. He moans as he kisses the delicate tender little spot below her ear.

“See you at dinner, my sweet wife.” He hums into her ear.

Kissing her neck in plucking smooch before chuckling and slipping away just as silently as he’d come. No more effective than a shadow. He steps back. Those golden sandy eyes shoot her a wink before he disappears down the corridor just to the end of the alcove she was pressed into.

She snatched the sight of his smile before he stalks off. Looking entirely too smug.

She says back into the wall and curses his name under her breath with a disbelieving chuckle. Listening to her heartbeat tremor slow in her chest. Calming it’s furious gong in her ears.

She eventually gathers herself and continues on up to their bedchamber. Fixing her messy hair and hoping her cheeks aren’t too flushed. She tries not to fidget at the very obvious wet sensation clinging between her thighs.

And he was right. She could feel how even the tops of her stockings are sodden.

She slips away upstairs on trembling legs. A little spark of fire in the pit of her belly told her she was most anticipating their retiring to bed tonight.

She ruminated that it’s part and parcel of marrying a big sensual vampire. That thought makes her chuckle secretly to herself.

~

Hours later and Kylo is waiting on his lovely wife. Ready to dine. He finished up his business an hour ago. Rightfully so it was starting to annoy him.

He had been looking over farm taxes and rents today until his eyes felt like they’d bleed if he had to force his brain to look over another one. The words turned into squiggling black mush on the page. He threw down his quill and admitted defeat.

He strode upstairs and into his private bath chamber where the water had been drawn. Hot and stinging. He scrubs up and dried off and had Wilton pick out a new set of things to dress in. To dine with his beautiful wife. He went for the usual blood, ice and black colours.

Snapped on his braces over his massive white shirt shoulders. Hooked on a paisley dark wine waistcoat, trimmed with satin to the back and velvet baroque paisley patterns to the front. He chose a white cravat with his tie pin. And finished with his usual dark shining boots and charcoal dark breeches. He patted cologne on his cheeks and ruffled a hand through his still drying hair.

When he steps out into the candle lit corridor. He spied Iris’ maid, Rose, going into her dressing chamber. She curtseys to him. Bids him a good evening. He bids her one back. Tells her to inform his Lady he is downstairs in the dining room when she is ready. Rose nods.

Kylo could tell from the spice and florals in the air that his Lady was still in the bath at present. He slips away. Making his way through the dim candle lit halls.

A still night glows off the deep white snow outside. Scattered pebbles of stars wink down from the heavens and the sky is a clear canvas of blue and black. Sticky and clear like ink. The stars caught in the pool of it hanging high in the sky.

He steps into the ballroom and there are no candles lit save for the roaring fireplace down the other end. The anteroom glows dim with yellow-gold candles dusting light up the fine walls. Honey light and charcoal rake along the finely scrubbed tiles and the marble statues and columns. Tapering apricot-flames flutter nervously on the gold votive stands.

He comes into the huge arched double doors of the dining room. Shutting the heavy heft of wood after himself. Spying the expert touch of his domineering housekeeper. Every surface shined and gleamed. The chandeliers sparkle. And the floors look ruthlessly scrubbed to within an inch of their tiled lives. She’s a very ruthless woman. She could run armies if she needed another career. She’s certainly a force to be reckoned with.

He smiles as he walks along the table. Starlight bouncing off the blotting snow casts over him as he passes by the wall of windows. Cloaking him briefly in moonlight and stars.

When he comes to the end of the table, he sees Jomar has been here. The table immaculately laid for two. A sight he never grows weary off. He’ll never grow tired of ribbing his Butler either - for placing everything so delicately with a ruler. Measuring the distance between the plates and the utensils and the distance of the chair away from the table. It does make him smile.

When he comes to the settees and chairs around the fireplace, roaring gold flames churning crimson amber gold in the breath, he sees he isn’t alone. Caligula, Cerberus, and Titus wait fireside for their master.

Their tails wag as he comes into view. They sit up and chuff growls at him. He walks over and fusses their ears as they lollop their great sturdy heads against his thigh. Ears pinned back in love staring up at him. Licking their great muzzles.

He steps past them and they flop back down onto the pelts and the rugs. Baked by the fires heat. A great slumbering tangle of paws and fur and canine snores. He moves to pour himself a brandy from the side table. An innocent drink before dinner and his lovely wife arrived.

He sips out the crystal cut glass as he steps back to the mantel. Holds his drink in his hands. Rubs his thumb over the cut intents in the glass. Watches the drink within turn into amber gold. The flames churning up its colour to a ruddy rust.

He wonders what tomorrow evening will bring - this ball that they were throwing. He feels an odd paranoia burn in the back of his mind like a forest fire. The guests would be a whole mix of people.

Some Iris had met. Some she hadn’t and for good reason. He’s certain it will attract a few of his own kind to wander on in through the doors. Centuries old friends and acquaintances.

He feels better now the storm had passed. It settled him knowing that the ball tomorrow was the only thing he need be wary of. He knows his tenants are good people. But he can’t vouch for the men and women like him. Some of them were pleasant, however some of them couldn’t be trusted around humans. He’ll keep an all seeing eye open. Especially watching over his wife within the crush of creatures and people.

It does lighten his heart to lighter things to remark how much he knows she’s looking forwards to it. She’d had a new gown for the occasion. And he was insisting on Jones bringing out another wreath of family jewels for her - whichever fat collar of diamonds best goes with the colour of her gown.

She’s been excited for days. Seeing the house come into its own. The garlands strung high everywhere. The ballroom ready to be danced in and lived in again. Cutting flowers to place in vases all over. Right now it’s all he can smell. The soap from the floors. Waxy polish and dried flowers and bright green spicing up the air.

Ranlor is ready to open its doors once again. No more will it be a dark place of shadowy silence inhabited by a lone vampire Lord clinging to the shadows.

He smiles. Sups down a little more of his drink. Spice and brandy burning his tongue. Leaning one elbow on the mantel in front of him. Watching the light sparkle off his drink and glass. His mind wanders to his wife. A day apart and he’s missed her dearly - hence his pinning her into a corner and coaxing her into overwhelming orgasm earlier.

Maybe he’ll have to snatch a dance with his Lady tomorrow at this ball? It’s been such a long time since they danced. The last time he danced with her was the first night he’d kissed her. In that house in England. Stood shivering in the snow. Tasting the sharp champagne and the cold frosty air on her lips.

Back then, not so long ago, she’d been a lonely maiden. And he’d, for all appearances sake, been a relentless suitor stealing her away from a loveless marriage.

It’s odd to remark how it seems insane that he can’t fall into bed at night now without her being there. He’s not used to being alone anymore. He seeks to hold her in his rest and kiss her neck. Listen as her thumping pulse lulls him to sleep each night.

A lot had changed for him in not such a long period of time. He smiles at every change she had brought. His love. His heart. His Iris.

He finds himself smiling. And then he hears the door crack open from the other end of the room. He smiles even wider. The scruff of boots and the cologne and coconut oil he can smell even from here, tells him it’s Jomar.

“Where the devil is my wife, Jomar? Is she ready yet?” Kylo calls back in demanding mirth. Not turning around. Still facing the severity of the flames. Licking heat and light up his skin.

Jomar clears his throat. Somewhat awkwardly. Not in his usual ribbing manner tonight.

“You have a visitor, my Lord.” He says evenly. Politely.

He only spoke to Kylo politely in the presence of strangers. Otherwise he spoke to him like a friend. Man to man.

“Do I?” Kylo asks. “Who is it? Send them in....” He insists. Gulping down the last of his Brandy.

Maybe it was a tenant coming up to see him. The night was clear and bright and ungoverned by a storm. Maybe it was business that couldn’t wait until morning.

“If it’s business, why don’t you show them to my study. Tell them I come directly.” Kylo says. Leaving his empty glass on the mantel. Ready to turn around.

“It’s not a visitor of _that_ kind, My Lord.” He declared.

Kylo chuckles. “Well, if they’re a friend, they’re exceedingly early for the ball...” He comments offhand with mirth.

Jomar hesitates on his next words. Chews them over in his mouth. Kylo can hear his brain reluctantly churning out thoughts.

“It’s Lord Verros, Sir.” He finally calls out.

Kylo freezes. He listens to the door widen and fine boots clack slowly on the tiles. The sweep of a coat brushed the floor. Running along the tiles behind them.

The door shuts. The sound of it bounces around the room so loudly it rings in Kylo’s ears. Silence reigns. But he can feel eyes stabbing into his back.

The fire spits and cracks, and the three hounds at his feet shoot to attention. Staring at this stranger behind him.

Low growls rumble threatening in their throats. But they don’t run up to attack. Even his gigantic hunting dogs are scared of this figure intruding in on their home. They are cowed into submission by him. They stay by Kylo for protection. Whining and growling in equal measure.

Kylo doesn’t turn around. He almost doesn’t want to believe it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He asks.

His voice so terribly low and tense. Quiet with disbelief. They are the only person Kylo will ever be scared of. The only one who can match him strength for strength. Who could outfight and overpower him.

For the first time in his life, Kylo knows what being weak feels like- he’s scared uneasy because he knows he’s not the power in the room-

They are. They always are.

The velvet of his coat brushes along the floor some more. Jasmine and sage bloom in Kylo’s direction. That scent he’d love to one day forget. One day forget who that fusion of scents belongs too. He can never forget that was his curse.

That silver melody of his voice answers his terse question.

“Can I not come and wish you congratulations on your recent union?” He checks. Always so calm and reticent - until he wasn’t.

Kylo stares into the flames. Jaw grit. He doesn’t want to turn. He doesn’t want admit to his reliable senses that he’s here. They’re screaming at him that he can’t ignore this. No matter how much he wants to.

“You think I’m witless enough to believe you came all this way solely for that?” He snaps back.

“I didn’t come here to cause harm. You are looking for problems where there are none to be had. Kylo.” They assure.

He tightens his jaw. He forgot how they liked to purr his name. They liked speaking soft little norse endearments to him too. Calling him love or their _fierce one_ \- that was his favourite.

“If you think I won’t be tempted to be wary of you and all that you can do and destroy- you don’t know me at all.” Kylo fires back over his shoulder.

That makes their heartless space sink in their chest. They knew him better than anyone. He was the only one they had ever properly known.

“I don’t come here to offer malice or to trade snarling insults with you.” He presses firmly. Persuading him. Silver tongue crooning and dripping honey.

“I came because I wanted to see you, I hope that’s enough. Time to finally lay old grievances aside.”

Kylo gives him silence. Silence which he fills with words and excuses.

“You can spend too long being livid at the past, Kylo.”

He continues. “I came here in the spirit of contrition, my dear one.”

Kylo scoffs.

He finally turns around. He can’t spit angry words into the flames. They don’t deserve them. The figure a few metres behind him does instead.

He finally gets a look at him. In the flesh again after all these years. Not as a spectre out the corner of his eye. No more a glimpse. A ghoul. A scent dispersing in the wind like a puff of perfume.

They were immortal as sin. He hadn’t changed. Not one essence of his appearance. Draegan was just as Kylo remembered him. Every spec of his being remained unchanged. Like an oil portrait. He was exactly the same.

A terrible pale nightmare of a man kept in perfect clarity.

Tall. Fair. Hair spilling ivory silk down his shoulders. A blue midnight velvet coat draping the floor. A silver tunic and black breeches and boots on his vastly tall legs. Velvet and satin brocade of his clothes tinged amber by the fireslight. His eyes glow warm and his smile is pulled into a nonplussed line.

“Contrition? Coming from you? Now that is rich.” Kylo snaps.

“If you want to be angry at me. Then by all means proceed. I merely wanted to see my first sire after all this time spent apart.” He says. He moves even closer. Now almost at the end of the table.

There’s still connection. Still longing here between them. But Kylo is pouring poison into every word. Sullying the hallowed ground between them. Every inch of distance he put between them was his salvation. His freedom.

Night air pours off Draegan’s clothes. The distant hints of mountain forest and pine and snow woven into his hair and coat. He burns bright with scents of the clear blue night knotted and twined with jasmine. As assaulting as coming across a sudden flux of spring in the midst of harsh winter.

“And Iris?” Kylo asks suddenly.

Draegan seems nonplussed. He blinks at the statement.

“I’m looking forwards to finally meeting her.” He insists calmly.

Kylo stares at him. Unspeaking. Unblinking for a moment.

“If you think I’m going to trust a single word you say...” Kylo tells angrily.

“We’re about to be interrupted.” Draegan predicts calmly. Correctly. Sad mournful eyes dropping to the floor.

The door at the end rattled again. Creaking open. That intercepted on Kylo’s rage.

Dainty slippers slapping the floor herald his wife’s arrival. She comes towards them in a plume of pears and geranium and soap. A rustle of silk in her creamy silk dress. A wreath of fat rubies spilling blood around her neck.

She was fixing her hair at the back of her head as she hurried along. Not looking forwards. If she had, she would’ve seen they weren’t alone.

“Sorry to keep you waiting so late Kylo- I had to check with cook about the-“ she raises her head and abruptly all the words sail right out her head.

Spilling like scattered marbles rolling away on the floor when she sees the handsome, savage pale figure cast in fire, stood near her husband.

An angel cast in flames. Him. The man she’s seen in fever dreams all her life but whose name she doesn’t know- until now. He exists. He’s real.

She gasps and feels her heart slowly stand still. Like a broken clock failing to tick over time. She can feel the tension in the room lay thick like fog. Old lovers and tragic pasts all stirred up.

Draegan smirks as he sees Iris. He devours her with his eyes. It feels like centuries has amounted to this moment. Watching her walk towards him. Her eyes finally able to see him. Jewels glittering on her neck. Those grey eyes gleaming across to him as she fights for breath - he could hear her heart was as manic as his should be. If he had one. He hears how his presence affects her.

Her husbands words draw her out a trance.

Kylo’s teeth are grit. He growls. “It appears we have a guest. My dear.”

~


	26. Unexpected

Iris could hardly breathe.

She can feel her chest moving yet this substantial method of breathing that had sustained her for many years and suddenly it isn’t enough anymore-

She felt as if she’s swallowed a bucket of pebbles and then a whole bank of sand. It sits sticky and lumpy and grey in her throat. Her palms suddenly feel like they could drip with moisture. She doesn’t know if she should be intrigued or terrified by this man’s sudden appearance into Ranlor.

The man Kylo assures her was hardly even a man at all. Even if his appearance as one was so thoroughly enchanting. Winningly convincing.

She’s never thought of herself as a senseless female moved into insensibility by the sight of a gentleman. But for tonight, there may aswell be nothing but clouds of mushy sawdust in her head between her ears.

He’s stunning.

She wipes her sweaty palms on her thighs. Wetting her lips as she comes forwards into the room. Her legs suddenly felt all shivery and useless. Like they couldn’t hold her up like they’d been doing all her these years. Her top half has become an iron statue held up by dry kindling twigs ready to snap.

Kylo’s face looks as terrible and dark as thunder. Storms ready to spit iron-hard hail and fury out his cross mouth.

Their guest, why, he stands as tall and as calm as a pale silver birch tree with the elements carving around it. Uncaring. Unmoved.

His dress is unusual for the era. He looks clad in robes more suited to a medieval time long since past. A long cloaking coat of velvet drapes his body. A coat like the night sky. The grain of it looks luxuriously soft. Dark blue. Bluer than nighttime horizons and deep shaded oceans. Lapping at his ankles. A coat like starlight and the clear heavens out that window tonight.

The ankles where his coat finished he is opulently wearing a finely polished pair of black calf boots and dark charcoal breeches. His upper half isn’t wearing a traditional shirt and waistcoat. It’s more of a tunic. Shimmering silver. They weren’t just clothes on him. They were fine works of art.

Stitched so finely Iris surmises it must be made of silver silk and thread. Binding thunder-cloud grey satin panels together. Moulded to his singular frame. Dipping a V down his neck. Teasing that the skin there was as pale as the acid milk pallor of the rest of his body.

She could feel his eyes rake across her like the kiss of cold pebble stones. Hard and unyielding travelling across her meagre dress. She knows this dress is sheer, a smoky-white wisp of tulle overlay over silk, but it feels as if he can see right through it- clinging right to her skin.

“A guest...” Iris repeated. Finally echoing her husbands statement. “Well. How nice. You must be here for the ball?” She asks nicely.

“He isn’t.” Kylo answers moodily.

She dares cast a closer look at their vertiginously tall guest as she walks even closer. He was taller than her husband. And that feat took some beating.

His sheer beauty was devastating. As captivating as a wild roiling storm captured in a jar. Bottled lighting. She’s finally seeing all of him and she’s able to look fully. No snatches or half glances or hiding himself from her. Secreting himself into the shadows as he’s done before.

His eyes stand stark and blazing from his proud angular face. Heavy lintels of dark brows govern an unconcerned brow. His eyes are as light as some tepid salty Mediterranean sea. Everything about his face is finely composed. Features all arrow straight and lush. Full pink cupid’s bow lips which arch a gentle smile at her. Hiding a mouth full of straight pearly teeth. Bones under his skin as sharply defined as silver axe blades.

He’s gazing across at her so fondly. Iris flickers her eyes across to Kylo and his eyes are dark as granite. Full up of hatred and annoyance. His lips pursed with all the things that lay unsaid. All the words slaughtered on the bed of his tongue before he could utilise them.

“I’m most sorry for trespassing on your evening with your husband. Lady Ren.” Their guest smiles at her. Nodding his chin down in a slight incline. He moves slow and smooth. Like water. Or the bough of a sloping willow tree. There’s something mournful and ancient about him.

“I assure you it’s no bother. It’s a pleasure to meet you...”

“Draegan Verros.” He smiles in introduction. Usually it was the job of the acquainted to introduce the unfamiliar.

But Kylo is standing still and terrible as a gravestone. Glaring at their guest. Turning his back on him. Crossing to the end table to fetch another drink.

Iris fights off a shudder of something prohibited that rolls along her spine. A serpent slithering cool up her back. As savage and cold as this strangers eyes and handsome smile. She suspected as much who this was. But the confirmation is still a lot to handle.

“It’s nice to make your acquaintance at last. Lord Verros. Kylo has of course mentioned you.” Iris says. Eyes flicking across to her husbands brute sized back.

Draegan steps closer to her. Plucks her hand into a gentle grip and raises it to his mouth and leans down to place a sweet kind kiss upon her skin. Rubs his thumb across the mark. As if to sear its press right down into her bones.

That’s how deep she feels it-

Her mortal heart flutters weakly like the wings of a baby bird. So precious and pure. Dwindling. He seeks to let himself admire her for a moment.

There was a lot to be admired-

The artwork of her fine ball gown. The swan like arch of her neck. A silky tumble of tawny chestnut hair. Neck wreathed in dripping scarlet oval rubies. She looks better in jewels and finery than he could have ever had guessed.

Her skin skips with the electricity of his touch. Robs her of all breath and rationality. He can sense the blood crawling along a flush in her chest. Working it’s slow way up her neck.

The sound of Draegan’s lips hitting his wife’s hand makes Kylo’s grip almost shatter the glass he’s holding to shards. The smack of it rings in Kylo’s ears. Makes his stomach roil.

“It’s entirely my pleasure to be able to meet you at last. Iris.” He smiles warmly at her. Stepping back.

Kylo turns back around and daggers his eyes into Draegan. He’s not touching her any longer. But the paranoia at the knowledge of it still pierced through the thick walls of his chest. Penetrating every muscle.

Iris looks to her husband. Who is moodily sipping his brandy. Staring hell fury at the unexpected arrival opposite.

“Will you join us to dine, Lord Verros?” Iris asks. It being the polite thing to do as hostess. It was half past ten at night. They couldn’t very well turn him away starving.

“I would like that very much. But I don’t wish to impose where I’m not wanted-“ He answers tactfully.

“Then don’t.” Kylo mumbles snappily into his glass.

Iris sends a look across to him before making for the table.

She asks a footman who comes in with the wine carafe to lay an extra setting. He does so immediately and pours wine for the two Lords and the Lady, all of whom were cloaked in extremely terse silence. Iris is the one to break it.

Draegan sits to her right, and Kylo to her left. She makes the head of the table as the square around it. Their guest peels off his outer coat and shrugs it over the back of his chair.

“Have you travelled far?” Iris asks Draegan. He smiles at the polite nicety. Kylo stayed opposite not ceasing his angered glares by one iota.

“The road from Sicily was long. But pleasant enough.” He answers her calmly.

Iris’ smile comes in earnest. Breaks over her face and her lips widen with it. “Sicily. How wonderful.” She declares. A place she’s often wondered about. Crossed it often in her reading novels. Her imagination for it was keen.

“Such an arduous journey. I wonder you took the trouble of coming so far-“ Kylo levels plainly at him. Sipping his wine as Draegan’s slender cold fingers with silver rings and stones dance around the stem of his. A statement more than a question.

“What brought you to Ranlor? if I may ask such a question.” Iris seeks.

“I came to wish you, and Lord Ren, joy on your recent marriage. I’d heard about the elopement.” He insists.

“Gossip travelled that far did it?” Kylo points out. He’s pinning him down with disbelieving eyes. Like that wasn’t all he came here for. ..

The way Draegan pronounced ‘Lord Ren’ made Iris wonder if he’d intended to use a softer more endearing term to describe him. But thought better of formality. She had an idea to put to this situation.

“We are hosting a ball tomorrow. For tenants and local society hereabouts. Please do feel free to attend. We’ve plenty of guest rooms ready.” She offers.

“Iris-“ Kylo barks in a warning.

Draegan looks across at him before gently drifting his eyes back to her.

“You are most kind in offering it to me, My Lady. But I fear judging by his lordships disapproval I am incited to decline.”

Iris glances down to her lap. Flickering between them. Draegan doesn’t lower his eyes. No part of him is submissive. He holds Kylo’s eyes as he sips his dark scarlet wine.

He sighs in irritation.

He looks across and sees Iris’ eyes look all soft. Filled with silver worry that she’s overstepped the mark. She hadn’t. She was only being her. Being a polite hostess to a tall pale stranger sheltering from the cold night. A stranger who admittedly stated he came here only to offer his well wishes and congratulations.

“You are welcome to stay if you should wish it.” Kylo mutters through grit teeth. With all the admitted enthusiasm as if he had just offered his chest as a target for archery practice.

Iris senses the defeat in his voice. Draegan nods as he swallows his mouthful of wine. Tilting his head at Kylo like he couldn’t believe the words just crossed his mouth. He arched a polite smile.

“Thank you.” He offers succinctly. “I’m most obliged. I believe I shall retire.”

Iris scraped back her chair. Kylo and Draegan both rose at her standing.

“I’ll just go and inform our housekeeper to make ready the guest suite.” She smiles meekly at Draegan.

Nodding before she steps away. He catches on the scent of her perfume and her skin. The rasp of her dress catching against the table. The way the big round rubies around her neck shimmer - wet and glistening - like blood. He follows the flowing tawny curl of hair down the nape of her neck like its his life’s greatest temptation.

Kylo waits. He turns his head and watches as his wife slips out down the pantry door leading to the kitchen passage for a second.

When the door shuts he snaps back to Draegan.

“If you even think of harming her...” He growls lowly. His voice coming from the most feral place deep inside him. He’s almost shaking with rage.

Draegan looks into Kylo’s eyes. As hard and as dark as rough black obsidian. He meant his words. They ran as deep as his vampire senses do. Down to every vein.

“You lay so much as one fingertip on her persons and I will turn you inside out.”

He knows Draegan could snap his fingers and make him drop down dead. He had twice Kylo’s strength and terrible power. He could do monstrous things that not even Kylo could compete too.

He knows where they stand. Him and his last love.

Draegan’s face is cold. Mournful with upset. “You truly think so little of me?” His voice is calm and shrunk with pain.

“I don’t know what to think with regards to you. I haven’t done so in a very long time. But a few harrowing details and memories of you stick in my mind.” Kylo snaps.

The blood. The slaughter. The gore. The people they’d killed together. Entire cities and countries of people lay scattered and dead because of him. He’s seen Draegan at war and at peace and he is savage in inhabiting both those worlds.

“I meant what I said.” Draegan promises stonily.

Kylo doesn’t look convinced. “I’ll have a tray sent to your room.”

Draegan sips the last of his wine. And gently stands the glass back down on the table. He parts with no flourish. Taking his coat with him. A wall of jasmine, sage and berries smacking kylo in the nose as he drifts past him as ineffectually as a cool night summers breeze.

He stops behind him. Out of sight. But Kylo can feel him and scent him still - it’s all still too much.

“Do thank your wife for me. For her being so accommodating.” He asks simply.

Kylo grits his teeth. He sighs. He doesn’t look back and Draegan leaves as silently as he’d entered. Slipping away.

Iris comes back not a moment later. The door shuts and he hears her padding footsteps come closer. She retakes her seat but doesn’t sit. She places her hands on the back of it.

“You’re angry with me, I suspect?” She asks. Sounding small.

Kylo doesn’t answer that question. He’s too churned up with deafening fear and gut wrenching anger.

“You do realise you just invited a demon to stay the night and to attend our wedding ball?” He says crossly. Slamming his napkin down on the table.

To his wife’s credit. She holds her ground.

“Kylo....” she starts. “It’s almost eleven at night. And the man is in the dead middle of Bavarian wilderness to pay us a call. What should he do? Pitch a tent under a tree?” She asks lightly.

“Don’t make light of something and someone you don’t understand.” Kylo warns. Taking his drink and retiring fireside.

The hall door latch goes.

Kylo turns and calls out a firm “Not. Now!” Yelling to the footmen carting in their trays for dinner. They abruptly wince and turn on the balls of their feet and sweep out.

Iris turns her head and watches him pace. Stalking the floors. Drinking more than was normal for him. He was never a man to get so gone on spirits.

“If he is as ruthless as you told me he is. Then why aren’t I dead already if that’s truly what he wishes?” She digs right into what’s important. She doesn’t tiptoe around her words.

Kylo gives her a hard, stern look. Eyes rough like obsidian stone.

“ _Don’t_.” He rasps lowly. Face screwing up like he wanted to snarl. Voice soaked in pain. He’s always said the one thing he couldn’t take was seeing her harmed. Or dragged to a place he cannot follow.

“I felt guilty, my love. If he only is here to wish us well on the marriage. Then is there a need to be so cruel...”

“Every damn need.” He answers succinctly. Still pacing. His boots rattle sharp on the tiles. Like slaps.

“Should I have been discourteous and shunned him?” She asks honestly.

Kylo thinks.

Hands hanging loose by his sides. Drink emptied. It’s warm fire blazes a trail down his throat to his belly.

“I don’t know. It’s uncertain and if there’s one thing I hate. It’s uncertainty. I cannot guess his motive. I’ve never been able to quantify his actions. Perhaps he is here on innocent intentions.” Once he got enough distance from the sight of Draegan, the foggy anger began to clear.

“But Iris-“ He starts gravely. Stepping close to her. Taking her chin and making her peer up at him.

“If he is cleverly lying through his teeth. Do you at least partly understand my reasons for being so suspicious and wary of him?” He asks her with big worried eyes. All drowning and shadow dark like honey whisky.

She nods.

His hand graduates from touching her chin. To cupping her cheek. She holds the wrist of the hand that touches her. “That much I do understand.” She confirms.

Above all he wants her safe. And that is his defining goal. From the second he opens his eyes in the morning. To when he closes them at night. He promised her in their vows to protect and cherish. He will always do so. Or else he will have failed his duty as a husband.

He tucks an arm around her and pulls her into his chest. She clasps her arms against his front. Slants her head sideways over the space containing his nonexistent heart.

“It was kind of him to come and wish us joy. He didn’t have to do that.” Iris points out.

He holds her close. How typical of her. Confronted with a very demon from the bowels of hell itself, and she latches onto the one smidgeon of kindness she can find about him.

“I know.” Kylo admits. Nestling his chin on her hair.

But his anger and caution didn’t dissolve just like that. They stayed lurking in the back of his mind. His hands stroked over her back. Holding her close.

He loved him once. Truly he did. He saw the worst of Draegan and yet still he loved him regardless. The newfound animosity so bewitched by his power and savagery. Enchanted by the gore.

Things are different now. Time has changed them. It’s moved him on. He’s found Iris. Draegan is still the same. Perhaps there was bitterness there in that circumstance. He won’t rest til he finds out.

“Let’s have some dinner...” She comments. Pulling back and smiling meekly up at her adoring husband. Cupping his cheek and pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

“Take my fathers advice. Everything feels better on a full stomach.” She tells him. He smiles at such wisdom. Kylo strings his arms around her hips and sinks into her offered embrace. He smiles into kisses. Hums gladly onto her lips.

As soon as he kissed her; she had to be his. He couldn’t let these gorgeous lips be had by any other man.

As per her advice, it makes him feel how he was rather sorry he didn’t get to know Mr. Ashton better than he claimed. He focused so much on the acerbity of her mother he assumed her father was the of same disposition. Iris assured him he wasn’t. Her father was kind and silent in his disapproval of her mothers fetid actions.

He seemed a gentle man. Kylo saw there wasn’t any malice in him. There was only some sort of guilt and disappointment at himself for not intervening on his wife making their daughter convene to a marriage she had to desire for. Selling her out for her dowry to better improve the family.

Kylo wrote the man a letter after they got back to Ranlor. He sent it off and seldom expected there to be a reply. Alas, two weeks later; it came. Kylo laid out in detail how it stood between him and Iris. Their love that had to flourish quietly. It came into fruition under the shadows. Concealed from sight.

He apologised for shrouding the Ashton household in scandal. For any detriment or damage this would cause to Iris’ younger sisters and their way in society toward a marriage. He offered Mr Ashton the sum of money towards their dowries. Ten thousand pounds apiece. Now Iris had gone - and not taken a penny of her families money with her, Kylo supposed such a sum could prove useful to any future potential suitors for Posy and Flora.

A dowry meant her mother couldn’t touch a penny. It was tied up by law, until those girls found a husband.

Mr Ashton’s response was eloquent and well worded. A very elegant and diplomatic hand. He thanked Kylo for what he had done for his eldest daughter. For he told him he was a man far better placed to remove her from the misery of her misfortunes. Especially as her husband. He felt he couldn’t ask of Kylo to part with more money for his two youngest. There was no malice in his refusal. Kylo still insisted.

Let Posy and Flora have their pick of men. Let them go to London and be frivolous and silly and choose someone phenomenally rich to wed if that’s what made them happy. He put stocks in the working farm at Westwell. Watched the prices slowly soar. Ploughing more money into the estate. He may have removed his influence from England. But he would help ensure the prosperity of two very silly sisters in law and his wife’s father.

He didn’t want those girls feeling the way Iris had felt. He wanted his wife to be contented. Secure in the knowledge her family were thriving. Even if she had to be apart from them. She was comforted by their safety and well being. Kylo would see it right.

He removes his hands from his wife’s waist and they move to go back to the dining table. Send for the footmen to come back in with the dinner service. The doors creak down the far end of the hall and Jomar makes his entrance. Arms laden with two large walnut wooden boxes. They are polished and gleaming. Shining off the firelight as their butler moves closer.

He placed the rich looking items on the table near his Lord and Lady. “Gifts from Lord Verros. My Lord.” He instructs. “With his compliments on your wedding.” He adds.

Kylo watches Iris smile lightly and step forwards to examine the two boxes. The first one she steps too is a deep dark wood box. With a triangular lid. Joints shining gold. Embossed arches of gold feet perch it a centimetre or two off the tables surface. And a golden handle tops the box. Iris admires the carvings etched into the rich chestnut-red wood.

Beautiful and ancient figures carved in. Women with long flowing hair. Arches and columns and beautiful patterns. A Grecian temple. She recognised Botticelli’s Venus recreated in perfect clarity. Emerging out of her clam shell from a warm sea. She drags her fingers over the masterful indents.

“He instructed this to be given to you, my Lady.” Jomar says with a warm smile. “It’s a Nettoor Petti jewellery chest from the 14th Century. It’s a famous antiquity of my country. Hand carved and inlaid with gold and silk.

Sure enough when Iris lifted the lid nothing but gold and red shines from the inside of the box. The lid creaks when opened and it is laid with gold and carvings and patterns are etched there too. The bottom is covered with a violent blood red silk. Scents of old wood and ancient spices and silks fills her nose. A gold chain links the lid to the bottom of the box.

Iris is most touched by such a rich gift. She swallows and shuts the lid. Running her fingers along the corner of the box. “It’s very beautiful. I’ll be sure to relay our thanks to him.” She nods.

Jomar nervously turns his eyes to Kylo. “He said this was yours. My Lord.” Gesturing to the other, taller square box.

Kylo nods succinctly. Jomar takes that as his dismissal. “Be so good as to tell the footmen to bring in dinner now. Jomar.”

He nods and turns away to do as he’s bid. “Very good. My Lord.”

Iris notices That tonight their witty Butler seems quieter. His tongue less acerbic in his japing with Kylo. Doubtless he knows the severity of Draegan’s presence. And all that means to his master.

Her husband turns back towards the hearth. He sits on the settee. Brutus slopes his head onto his knee. Kylo rubs his hounds ears. Looks into the flames. Doesn’t acknowledge the gift left to him on the table.

Iris turns back to the unsuspecting little box. She lifts the lid. She sees two very fine silver metal goblet glasses. Engraved with crystal cut patterns in. The stems twined with vines. A matching pair of metal goblets nestled into a crushed red velvet box. Judging by the runes carved into the clasp around the box. It was a relic from Kylo’s Viking time. From the era of his mortal beginning. The box and it’s contents smelled aged. Having come from a time long past. A time precious to Kylo. Iris could see Draegan meant it as a kind and kingly gift.

Kylo only found pain in that antique token.

Iris feels a shard of something sad and twinging plunge into her heart. He doesn’t even want to look at it. She does instead. She takes on that burden. She takes a finger and runs it around the rim of the glass. The smooth metal cold and sharp under her fingertip. Such a pretty betrothal gift.

She didn’t hear Kylo move in close behind her. Until she felt him. His body at her back. He aligns her back to his chest reaches an arm over her. Placing his hand over hers. He brings the lid back over and shuts the box. Conceals it’s contents.

“Trinkets of old have no such sway over me anymore, Dove.” He tells her. One hand slithers around her belly. Holds her.

“I have no need of antiquities and treasures. No matter how well meant their intention. I hold you dear. You are what matters most to me now.” He explains gently.

She’s his biggest treasure. Material goods are nothing to him.

Lacing their fingers together over the box. Kissing the side of her jaw. She feels utterly weak at the knees. She sighs a smile and leans back into his hold.

“Some men would call you a fool to value your wife over such riches.” Iris warns him sweetly.

“Those men aren’t blessed to have a wife like mine.” Comes his pleased answer. He hugs her close and holds her.

The doors clatter again. Jomar is herding in the footmen Kylo terrified out the room earlier. If he’s not mistaken he can smell the infamous Mrs McTavish’s roast goose, with chestnut, celery and nutmeg stuffing. Roasted carrots and the warm white wine and thyme gravy sets Iris’ stomach growling in want of it.

He helps his wife into her chair and they share a somewhat quiet dinner. Both very aware of the guest the nature of the guest have residing upstairs. They share idle conversation and decide to retire after the first course is done with. Kylo tells Jomar they’ll have a glass of wine in their room.

He bids them a goodnight and sets about shooing the hounds out to their baskets in the warmth of the gun room. Putting out the candles with a silver snuffer. Grey smoke filling the high ceiling as he does.

Iris feels Kylo’s hand on her back as he leads her up the staircase to bed. Their erotic mood of earlier somewhat shattered and lessened by the sudden arrival of their houseguest. They walk up quietly together. Accompanied by the sound of wind rattling at the thick stone castle walls. And the swish of her skirts and the black of his boots on the tiles. An odd sort of silence falls between them. But not a malicious one.

They merely both seem cautious of the fact their home is playing host to Kylo’s maker and ex-lover.

They undress and make ready for bed. Iris brushed her hair at her vanity table. Kylo sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. Unknotting his cravat. Iris goes to her washroom and comes back in a great shapeless linen gown. The amber of the fire douses her gauzy nightdress. Her hair loose down her back. She comes across to him, lovely and smelling of lavender, and he sighs as she runs her hands through his hair. He arches back to look up at her.

“We’ll be alright won’t we?” She seeks. For reassurance.

“Yes my dove.” He assures her gently. “We will.” He promises.

She helps him lift his shirt off his arms. Over his head. Ruffling his wild hair. He stands and works his breeches down to his knee and kicks them away. Standing naked before her. She strings her arms around his cold torso and just holds him. Holds that big brutal body close. Smells the musk and the shaving oil on his skin from his shave that morning. The cotton that rasped against his skin all day long.

Kylo sinks down quickly and snatched her up into his arms. Grabbing the backs of her knees. Hauling her up the long stretch of his tall body. Her breasts clasped into his sternum.

“I suppose with all I those last minute arrangements for this ball tomorrow. I can’t spend all night between your lovely thighs?” He asks her as he spins her around and deposits them on the bed. Crawling into the middle.

“Probably not. I’ll need my strength up for tomorrow.” Iris smiles at him. Cupping his neck as he nuzzles his nose into her collarbones. Kissing his way along the delicate bones under her skin.

“I’ll have to be so very gentle then.” He persuades in a purred drawl, humming lowly into her lips as he gives her kiss after kiss after kiss-

They put everything out their minds. And Kylo makes love to his wife slowly. So slowly. Sensually slow.

Peels up her nightgown and grabs her hips. Slides in slow and deep and thrusts into her in long unyielding strokes. They share kisses and hungry breaths muggy against open mouths, tasting each other’s moans and sighs until their pleasure comes crashing down on them both.

Kylo nearly bites clean through her bottom lip when he cums. Humming bliss. Spilling deep as she clamps down around him. A perfect vice of pink soft wet. He arches over her and places his palms flat under the rumpled linen pillows under her neck. Kissing the taste of her sweat away. That sweet essence of her gathering on his tongue.

Still there from when he sucked on his fingers and checked she was ready enough to take him inside. Ready to be fucked open.

Kylo notices how heavy her eyes look. She’s peering up at him and though her grey eyes sparkle gold with embers dying orange in the half, he can tell she is close to sleep. Her heartbeat slowing like thick hot syrup. Beating calmer and calmer.

Kylo removes his cock from her trapping heat. Feeling her slipping down out his balls. Staining the inside of her thighs with her slick and his cum. The amalgamation of their pleasure. He cups her face and sweetly covers her lips with his.

“Sleep. My dove. I know you’re tired. Sleep now.” He croons softly at her. Covers rustling over him as he moves back. Her eyes slip shut. Falling away to her dreams. He’s used her twice today it’s no wonder she’s tired.

Kylo’s never been more alert.

He thought making love to his wife would wipe out his energy but in truth it only seemed to restore it.

He waits to hear her breathing even out. Slipping in a cosy deep pattern. Strokes hair off her sticky brow and gently moves off the bed. He gets himself another glass of wine from the bedside. Pulls the draperies around the bed. Shielding her. Keeping her safe. Tucking her into a crimson gold brocade fortress.

He knows sleep won’t come easily tonight. It won’t serve him kindly. It will be wrought with obstacles and hazards. His mind too busy to settle. Spinning and churning like a wooden top dradle. Hurtling out of all control.

He finds a nightshirt from one of his chest drawers. Slides it over his head. Sits by the fire and lets his mind drift. Wandering and brooding over the day and it’s strange events. Just when he thought the biggest spectre of his past was through with him- he comes ploughing his suave way back in like a force of calm nature. That was his way- total devastation.

He flickers a look across to the bed as he lets the burgundy wines velvet taste roll over his tongue. He spies his wife sound asleep under the covers. Tucked around her spent body.

Is it any wonder he’s wary? This time around, he has things to lose. Precious things.

Things that can be ripped from his clutches and spoilt. When he left Draegan all those years ago the only thing he lost was himself. He had no one to protect or cherish. Or worry over.

He’s resolved not to sleep much tonight. Ugly paranoia makes him afraid. He’ll stand guard by the bed all night if he must. Anything. Anything to keep her from harm.

He doesn’t trust Draegan’s honeyed words.

He wants to stay awake for that very reason. His mistrust.

It turns out he can’t beat it through sheer determined vampire and Viking will alone. The night wears on and he finds his own eyelids grow treacherously heavy. He shakes his head. Tries to discount its hold on him. But he’s smothering yawns and he knows his warm bedsheets and his naked wife tucked dozing between them is beckoning to him.

Kylo loses the fight. He climbs under the covers and sinks down defeated. Cuddles up to his wife. Slides one arm around her waist and and tucks himself in close.

Maybe holding her will loosen the iron grip of paranoia on his mind. Keeping her close will keep her safe.

The night draws on still. Candles burning low until they die a quiet black death. The fire crumbles and tumbled and turned into grey ash. White flecks swallowing up the red flames. That too burns out. Night shines foggily through window. Struggling through the thin slit in the heavy blood curtains. Stars light snd navy blue smeared by grey cloud.

When he comes to the doors of the bedroom he used to be so familiar with, he can smell them still drifting upon the air.

He can smell sweat. Exertion. Lost moans. He can taste sex.

Kylo was right in the exclaimatoon he often purred in reverence between her thighs. She smelled so sweet-

The silver rings on his fingers rasp metallic, crunching hard against the door as he pushed it open. Yet creaked on the wood floor.

No one on the massive bed even stirred.

For they are well guarded behind the red brocade canopies at each corner of the posters. Bleeding into purple in the dark blue night fixed on them. Malforming the silken threads.

He moves across the room in that devastating way he does. His long velvet robe rasping the floor. He’d abandoned the blue heavy velvet coat of earlier. Now he’s dressed down after his bath. Sumptuously perfumed with all his oils and soaps. The small cake of cashmere wood and pomegranate soap he’d rubbed all over his chest. Now the scent sits there, chalky clean and blooming. Ripe and dark just like the rest of him.

His crimson silk robe is tied tight around his trim waist. It swathes his sylphy figure. Undone down his pale chest where his night shirt gapes. Dark breeches still on his legs and his feet are bare.

Starlight peppers him in brilliancy as he walks to the bed.

The perfume of him nests in the long pallid silk of his smooth hair. Curled around every icy strand. Jasmine on a cold night air. Carried with wisps of elderberry on a bed of wooden sage. The dark terrible - alluring - fragrance of him comes with him as he moves. Filling the room like frost crawling at the walls. Like cold mist on a morning clear.

He’s such a contradiction. Paler than snow but at the same time, a shadow at the end of their bed. Watching the slumbering figures within. He walks slowly over to Iris. Watching where she lay nestled into her snowy pillows. Cushioned on the plump of it and a tumble of wild dark hair.

And oh, he _so_ likes wild dark things-

Draegan directs a look across to Kylo. Where he lays behind her. One hand clasped out flat to the sheets where he’s reached for her in his slumber. She’s twisted away, now flat on her back. Hair mushed around her neck and behind her head. One hand folded over her stomach.

He knows she’s naked under that thin cascade of cotton. He can taste the musk of her. Between her legs where she’s sweet and fragrant. The smell of cotton sheets that clings to her skin. Crisp and underlying the smell of her body. The lavender oil she rubs on her pulses at her wrists before bed.

He can hear that very pulse now as he towers over her side of the bed. Peering in. Looking in on woman he’s always wanted and yearned to know - but here she is a woman he can’t have.

He’s a hairs breadth from his biggest desire. Biggest he’s ever known. It’s here right before him. Laid out on the bed. And its gnawing at his stomach like a thousand knives. He’s been so lonely for so long. Shrouded and kept quiet. He doesn’t want to be silent anymore.

He sighs. His face an expression filled mask. Veiled in sadness that sits around him like drowsy fog. His eyes scan along her shape. Her perfect shape and he can see all of her so clearly.

He can’t restrain himself. Draegan reaches across and strokes a curl of hair away from her cheek. Liking how the smooth of it glides along his fingers.

Brown like rich soil dampened by autumn rain. He likes the nutty-tawny notes entwined within her hair. Rough and wiry under his fingers. Messy and naturally set with a gentle curl. He’d seen the tease of a curl earlier. Lying at the creamy nape of her neck as she’d turned. How tantalising it had been-  
  
  


"If only you knew how long I've waited for you, Iris." He whispered into the dark. Moving that curl of hair off her neck to better see her pulse.

“All these years I've watched you and I can finally show myself to you, you're ready for me.” 

He sighs in pleasure when he sees her bare neck. Swallowing with long restrained hunger. That little bead of sweat sticky on her neck from where she made love to Kylo earlier. He wants to sink his tongue into the dip of her collarbone. Lap that drop away. Nestle into the little hollow of where her throat meets her neck.

It ruined him to think how good she’d look and sound as he placed a kiss to that neck. Silk hot under his lips. He wants to taste the sound her pulse makes on his lips. Delve into her skin and make a home next to the beating centre of her life that quivers in her chest. Trembles the cage of her ribs.

“If he knew I was this close to you...” He couldn’t help chuckling at the thought. Running his thumb along her jugular. He watches the moon catch on the round oval of his thumb nail. Shining off the silver hematite stone ring sat slipped onto that digit.

If Kylo had known Draegan was this close to his Iris - he’d have torn open the sky and unleashed hell. And damn everyone in this world. Only her safety mattered.

“My god. Iris. I could hear you tonight. I heard you with him. I could taste you as he split you open on his cock. Oh my little spark. How I long for that. I'll allow you to come to me but, be warned, I won't wait forever....I've waited for far too long already.” He promises.

Centuries. Millennia he has waited-

His hand cups under her neck and he lifts her hair and leans down and slopes his face next to hers. Lays a kiss on the edge of her zygomatic bone and the cushion of her cheek.

“I can taste you in the air. Iris. How perfectly sweet and beautiful your cunt is. Beyond compare. I’ve never wanted anyone so much as I want you.” He tells in a whisper. Drinking in the nearness of her skin. He pulls back and those all-knowing topaz eyes flicker across to the man on the pillow behind hers.

“How divine it is that you slumber so peacefully with the devil's hound at your back. Sleeping so soundly indeed even as death sits here, mere inches away from you...” He explains. Reaching up to stroke her face. His fingers across her jaw, and his thumb under her chin.

“You should fear me. My little spark. Everyone fears me. I have incited terror this whole world wide, in every era, in every mortal I come across. And yet you let me into your home and your favour so simply.”

That touches on him deep. Her earnest honesty with him. So directly forthcoming.

She looked to him and only saw kindness. She didn’t see the sheer power of him. And he’s certain in time, she will find out more of what awful things he is capable.

He takes his hands off her and draws back into a stand. Feeling the starlight behind him glow in his hair from the slit in the curtains. Carried across the room to his back in a severe slice.

“My spark. For that’s what you are to me, my sweet. A fiery little ember in the crux of your time. Just starting to flicker to life. Transient and precious. To a man you may be early in your life. Ripe in age. Yet, to me your mortality is fleeting still.” He explains.

“Rest now little spark.” And oh, how he smiles so wickedly. “Go your happy dreams and smile alongside your husband-”

He turns away and makes for the door. Leaves a cool hair raising promise behind. Lust and impatience in his voice like cruel frost. His needles and silk voice he pledges with perseverant force;

“I’ll be waiting.”

He leaves on those words - that vow - hanging in the air like a cold draft slinking around the room. The devil lurking at the fringes of their awareness.

-

The day of the Ranlor ball dawns bright and thankfully clear. The roads aren’t encumbered down by more snowfall or heavy blizzard storms. It’s clarity and sun shines over the glowing snow. Frost hangs bitterly still in the air. A savage chill envelopes the cold castle walls.

Iris doesn’t feel it much. She’s in the sun trap of the orangery after breakfast. She had it in bed on a tray - the dining room is being busily reorganised for the supper tonight at the ball. Kylo took his breakfast in his study after an early ride out on Erland to clear his head. He was up and dressed and gone by the time the sun was barely warm in the sky.

She woke to a kiss on the cheek. A soft curl of his hair and the ebb of his blackberry and spice cologne, she stirs with cold lips leaving a smeared kiss on her cheek. The wool of his coat lapping at the bed as he leans away - unable to resist kissing her shoulder before he does finally leave.

“Stay in bed. Dove. Stay warm. Rest up for tonight.” He persuaded. Smiling onto her cheek as he spoke. She turns and holds over his big hand that spanned her belly.

He didn’t want to be riding out to the other side of the forest to call upon one of his landlords to discuss business. He’d far rather stay here where he can keep an eye on her - especially with present demons that lurk the halls. But he had little choice in the matter. His Lordly duties overtook his husbandly pride.

“Be nice to my horse.” She jokes as he walks away. He rolls his eyes.

Knowing his luck the moment Erland sees him, the fool horse will roll on his back - or pretend to be sick. Or pretend to be dead. He really did favour Iris to a maddening degree- Kylo wished he could blame him for it. But he cannot.

She mumbles and sinks into his pillow as she watches him leave. Tugging the blankets over her shoulders. She‘ll have to remember to slip into something before Rose comes in with her breakfast tray at eight.

She lounges and obediently did as her husband bid her so. The fire roars. Keeping the room toasty. Iris curls up in their big bed. The silk hangings trapping the warmth in with her. Preserving it.

She has her breakfast and a cup of tea whilst Rose and Mrs Jones draw her a quick bath - a scant rub down really. She scrubs up quickly with simple peppermint soap. Leaves the rose petals and oils for tonight’s bathing before the ball.

Rose helps dress her in another one of her wrap around day dresses. A plain and deep fern green cotton with little trim. And a sheer off-white fichu tucked in around her neckline. The corners of it peek at her shoulders when she moves.

She grabs her sketching implements and tells her housekeeper they may find her in the Orangery if they wish for use of her. She laced her boots and took her heavy fur lined grey coat and scarf for if she fancied a short walk out of doors in the snowy gardens. She laced up her boots and went on her merry way.

The atmosphere wandering the halls was one of joy and somewhat tense. There hasn’t been a societal ball hosted here for nigh on thirty years. The rooms of Ranlor buzz with the fluttering excitement of it. Maids chattering with excitement as they pass her by and call out a good morning in high spirits.

She spies Jomar being very stern handed overseeing the placement of the dining table to the far wall of the hall as she steps past and down the corridors towards the Orangery.

She does love walking through these doors knowing what tranquil peace and nature await her on the other side. The high glass walls strangled with vines, crawling ivy and trailing climbing plants. The sweet nectar and muggy heat engulf her as she steps in. Hearing nothing but that fountains and the sweet chirp of nature and it’s calm serenity.

She makes straight for her favourite spot. The iron bench, stuffed with cushions and blankets, nestled into the tall lilac trees and fragrant flowering shrubs near the sunny east corner.

She folds her coat out below her and sits upon it. Nicely nestled into the nook. The fountain and large hexagon pond just beyond her sight and hearing. She can hear the frolicking Goddess stone statue in the middle of the fountain posed and spouting its water. The mossy maiden with her double handle Grecian urn tipping out the water that spits and slaps the surface like a constant, and never ceasing trickle of rain.

Iris feels at peace here. She leans back from the page of her drawing and sketches for a moment. Leaning her head on the bench behind her. She’d pulled her feet up and admired how the little songbirds sang their sweet chorus.

She hasn’t drawn terribly much since their honeymoon in Scotland. There seemed little time to submit to her beloved pastime requiring such industry and patience. She has indulged in a couple of hours sat at the bottom of a huge tree in the forest around Ranlor. Tucking her back up against the bark and just sketching and drawing what she had seen. The new land, new plants. New environments.

She decided this morning it would take her mind off of things. Keep her occupied for a few hours before she had to go and make ready for the ball. Rose told her last night she had so many ideas for her hair. Iris had no prettily reserved talents with styles. She left that in her maids very capable hands.

She was sketching the orangery before her. The prospect from where she sat of the pond and the surrounding greenery. She sat hunched over her drawing pad. Smudges from her pencils and granite cloudy grey all over her hands. Dutifully glancing up and down and adjusting her pencil.

Iris looks up again and something shimmers out the corner of her eyes. A tall figure. Willowy and sweeping into the room slowly. Slow like water - he moves so certainly and calmly.

She looks across and startled to see she wasn’t alone anymore. Shock, cold and sudden, speared through her. Flushed into her blood and she dropped her sketching pad.

It doesn’t clatter to her feet. Draegan stoops quickly and catches it. One handed. She sees those silver rings on each of his fingers glint in the sun. Latticed and knotted silver. Spanning half his knuckles and long fingers. Blue, cloudy white, and fog grey stones sit in various rings on his fingers. Symbols of ancient wealth.

Iris puts hand over her chest. Feeling her heart ram into her palm. Thumping wildly as she calmed down. Draegan smiles lightly, straightening up and handing her back her pad.

“I’m sorry to have startled you so-“ He smiles with mirth barely veiled in his smile.

“Oh no. Please. Forgive me for-“ Iris found herself blushing despite herself. An uncomfortable pink heat blaring out her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be so disturbed. Lord Verros. You just took me by surprise. For I didn’t even hear you come in.” She tells.

Iris raises her eyes to the sylph of his figure towering over her. Blotting out the sun. But then he walks slowly around her side, coming into view.

He was just as luxuriously dressed as yesterday. Flowing robes of icy silver. The insides of the swathe of his shimmering coat lap at his sides. She catches a glimpse of how the inside is lined with bittersweet blood red. Vermillion silk the colour of spilled veins.

The coats brush along behind his ankles. His boots today she notices are suede grey and end at his knees. His breeches are charcoal grey and they cling religiously to his long legs. On his top half is another tunic like garment. Panels and piping pulled together to mould to his impressive body. That tunic too is a violent bloodstained red. His hair tumbles like a snow drift down his back and shoulders.

Today Iris notices it is braided. Half of it pulled back off his face and past his ears. It lies in elaborate knots and cuffed silver and coiled serpents keep it in place. Plaited so beautifully and seamlessly by his own masterful hand.

“I spy the hand of a very accomplished artist.” He comments kindly. Hands behind his back as he stands near. It was an almost military stance. She echos back to that odd dream she had. It seems years ago now.

After Kylo rescued her out that terrible rainstorm and she fell ill with fever. She’s seen him. In that terrible bloody battle in the snowing woods. In armour. Brandishing a bloodied sword with blood spattered in his fine porcelain hair. She shakes the thought away- a chill running along her spine. Reminding her that this man is hardly even that-

Not even a man at all. He may look as pretty and as alluring as a bush full of butterflies. But really, he was another story altogether. She hasn’t figured out yet if he is friend or foe.

Iris smiles meagrely. “Hardly. It’s a rarely practiced hobby I’m afraid. I wish I could assign more time and skill to it.”

She’d looked to the rather poor sketch she was doing of the pond and fountain- she’d never intended for anymore to actually glimpse her drawing. It was just a nice occupation for her. Scribbling down mad little shapes of cabbage moths or snails or the weird shaped mushroom and fungi she saw nestled at the damp-soggy root of the trees.

When she looks up again, he’s looking down at her. Eyes so piercing and clear. Spring water blue. Focused on her and listening intently. She’s flustered that someone as beautiful as him pays attention to one such as her.

“I think you’ve captured its likeness.” He tells her. Peering down at it again. She nervously moves her fingers to let him lean over and see. “It takes a certain eye to see such things and recapture it so flawlessly.”

“I’d love to devote more time to sketching. I’d like to sit in the woods hereabouts. They are so beautiful.”

He knows she does. He’s seen her back in her home country. Huddled against a great elm as she draws the little frolicking harvest mice on the wildflowers. He knows her hobbies better than the back of his own hand.

“Ranlor certainly has fine grounds. I must admit though, I always was, and still am most partial to this orangery. I used to spend many an hour in here. Amongst the company of the life and growing things.”

As he talks, he sways slowly across to the pond. Rasping of silk trailed behind him as he moved. Clack of sure boots click on the tiles. He looks into the murky green pond. All the radiant lilies there, curled open, fragrant and white, waiting for the vitamin kiss of the sun.

Iris stays at the bench and watches him lower himself to sit on the wall surrounding the pond. Every move he made was so certain and affluent.

“I can see why. I know how deeply Kylo loves the forest. The smell of the pine and wood, the snow and the enclosure of the tall dark trees. And I must admit I do too-“ She smiles. She adores getting lost in her wanderlust.

“But there’s so much tranquility to be had in here. It’s very soothing. The fruit trees and the flowers. It might just be my most preferred room of Ranlor.” Iris tells.

Draegan chuckles. The sound floats across on the summery air. It may be that there are icicles hanging on the window outside. The landscape blotted with muffling blinding snow. But inside here? The sun trapped room is hotter than the tropics. Smells heavenly too. Floral and nectar and sun drenched plants.

“I couldn’t agree more. Tranquility is oft so hard to come by.”

“Certainly an undervalued aspect of my life until recently.” Iris tells him. Laying aside her sketches. Not wishing to be rude and draw in presence of company.

He turns back to look at her. He had leaned over and admired the petals of the waterlilies for a moment or two. She noticed that after he touched the bud of a closed lily. It started to slowly creep open it petals.

“Am I to take it, your life proceeding marriage wasn’t a peaceful one?” He asks curiously. She watches the curtain of silk he had for hair, drift and fall down over his left shoulder where he moved.

“It wasn’t such a terrible life.” She informs. Truly. It wasn’t. Before Kylo came bursting into her life, she’d had her sisters and her chores and tribulations of course. But she’d hardly ever felt like her life wasn’t worth living.

“I just- felt like I was being manoeuvred more and more into a suffocating life and a match I could never want. To a man who could never respect or love me.” She informs. “He saw me only as a mission to be accomplished.” She adds. Thinking of Hux and his callous emotionless expressions.

Draegans mood soured to hear of a man so cruel to her. “Such a man cannot be deserving of you, Iris.” He says with firm finality.

She blushes again. He continues.

“Pain of a loveless marriage is enduring and tragic. I’ve seen many such a match in my time.” He says honestly. “They are tolerable but, one shouldn’t settle for ones life being only-tolerable.”

“I concur.” Iris nods. Not wanting to cause awkwardness or pain by talking of her marriage to Kylo to the man he last loved.

“I think it takes a lot of courage. To seize the life, as you did with Kylo. Abandoning the old for the new. It must have been a hardship.”

“For love of my husband? I find I can bear it tolerably enough.” She answers.

Draegan’s smile grows wide. He knew as much. But confirmation of that news made him happy to hear.

“I’m glad to see. This castle clearly invigorates and inspires you. It’s as if you were made to be the Lady of it.” He flatters.

In part, only he knows how much truth that statement holds.

“I take no such credit. My housekeeper and my Butler could run the world if set to task. I regularly give them my thanks.” Iris says with mirth.

Draegan arches his smile gently at her modest answer. He absorbed everything so calmly.

“It is a fine morning out. Might I persuade the Lady of Ranlor to accompany me on a turn around the snowy gardens?” He asks. Rising to a stand. Settling his coats around him nicely and clasping his hands before him.

Iris looks up at him. She gapes her mouth because she knows she should refuse. Kylo was most sincere in his caution last nights of her being alone with Draegan. But she can’t find anything harmful about a stroll through the Dutch garden and shrubbery.

“Of course you may. Your Lordship.” She smiles meekly. Rising to a stand and pulling her thick, fur lined coat up her arms. Settling it’s heavy woollen weight over her shoulders.

She didn’t even hear him move. But suddenly he is not too far behind her. Standing and waiting patiently on her. She turns and finds him stepping closer. A respectable distance between them still.

“Please. Do call me Draegan.” He says charmingly. His pleased voice is the most soothing thing shes heard. Honey dashed into sweet cherry wine.

Iris smiles and ducks her head as she buttons her coat. Calfskin gloves in her pocket that she’ll pull on when they come to the outdoors. He hangs back - ladies first - and she leads the way out of doors. The plants grew so thick they couldn’t wander side by side through them comfortably.

They come to the doors and Draegan holds it for her as they exit. A powerful embrace of cold rips at their bodies. Iris isn’t all entirely surprised to see that he doesn’t even flinch at the cold. Still in his Satin tunic and velvet coat. He doesn’t even give any indication that he can feel the bitter clime.

They fall in step, side-by-side, walking through the intricately trimmed garden shrubs. All dusted with snow. Evergreens shrouded in frost and cold. Surviving and plucky in the dominant silver of winter.

Iris pulls on her gloves as they walk down the steps past a frozen pond. The water within sheeted to a silver mint green. Fountain in the middle dripping icicles. They footsteps crunch along the frost-stone gravel.

He looks almost too handsome in this setting. The backdrop of sheer white making his pale form and face stand out all the more. Especially against the bloodstain red of his coat. He looked so composed of frail things. Creamy skin. Icy hair. Savage glass bones and paper skin. And those blazing blue eyes at the centre of it all. So direct and stunning.

She realises now bewitching he is- how enchanted she is to be so close.

“I imagine this is a vastly different surround to your home, is it not?” She can’t quite bring herself to call him Draegan yet. The mere act of doing so seemed too intimate.

“Indeed. Sicily is vastly different. I do prefer the heat to the cold. My mansion is set into the cliffs overlooking the sea on one side, and abutting a lake to the other. I have many tropical gardens to wander through at my leisure.” He smiles in fondness of recalling it.

“It sounds beautiful.” Iris supposed.

“I’ve lived in many counties over the years. But I find the Mediterranean climate is one that best agrees with me. Though I can bear the snow enduringly enough. I find it’s a poor substitute for a warm sea breeze and a marble veranda on a warm Venetian night.”

Iris smile deepened at the images he produced. Star studded heavens so wide and clear, a terrace drenched in sunshine all day and baking in the warmth of it that hasn’t left at night still. She could almost taste the smell of roses and sea salt, and faded sun on a tropical garden, studding the air. It’s quite a heady thought.

“I’ve only english weather. That’s not anything to be envious of.” She jokes as they come up another set of steps. Up along the tiled terrace which led through the the box maze just past the walled garden.

She holds her skirts and coats up as she climbs the steps. Draegan seems nonplussed. He lets his coat drag out behind him. The velvet train rasped and scraped along the hard snow.

She felt small by this man’s side. So impossibly dwarfed in her mortality when here is a man taller than her husband, larger than life. Alive for as many centuries as there has been to this earth. It’s astonishing and she finds it daunts her.

“From what I recall of English weather. You are undoubtedly right.” He answers.

It starts to snow when they come up the stone steps and onto the terrace. Ice crusted everywhere. More snow bleeding sifting down like heavy flour from the sky above. Gentle flakes kiss the air. Racing and dancing in a strange floating arrangement. Draegan watches snowflakes tangle in her hair. Melting on her dark lashes as she looks skywards to assess the snow.

“I hope it doesn’t come too heavily. Or else our ball will be a treacherous journey for those travelling in.” She smiles.

He lingers for a moment on the way snow melts onto her hot skin. Sliding melting down the arch of her neck. Tempting little drop of it easing down her beating jugular. He raises his eyes instead to her rosy pink smile.

“I’m sure it will hold off.” He predicts. Not taking his eyes from her. He’s seen snowfall a million times in a million ages. But he’s never seen anything like her-

“Did you know each snowflake is different. There can never be any two that are the same.” He explains. Holding out his pale hands. She watches snow twirl and settle into his palm.

“I think there’s something terribly beautiful about that. I appreciate the forming and hardship of such unique little things.” He smiles. Turning his piercing eyes gently to her. The fingers of the icy wind flutters at his hair and Iris can’t think to peel her eyes away from his heavy gaze and his heavy words.

Her mouth gapes- fortunately they are interrupted. A footmans treads come crunching through the snow. “I beg your pardon. You’re wanted in the dining hall, mi’lady.”

Iris smiles at the lad. Stood there shivering in the cold. She nods at him and tells him she’s coming directly.

She turns to Draegan. “I enjoyed our walk very much.”

“The pleasure was mine.” He answers. She smiles wider and holds his gaze for a moment before she peels away after her summons.

Draegans eyes don’t leave the grey shape of her as she moves back through the gardens. Lavender, and pears and soap dancing her scent across to him on the cruel wind. Reminding him more of what he cannot have- yet.

Kylo is leading Erland back through the gardens towards the stables. He sees that redoubtable figure of his last lover and his wife, walking along in conversation.

His gaze was harder than all the Snowy frost crunching under his boots.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who wants to know/wonders at all what Draegan looks like 👀 Lee Pace as Thranduil in the hobbit without the pointy elf ears. Tall, fair and ridiculously handsome https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/296252481743162993/


	27. Gathering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One day I will cut down on my descriptions of minor characters; today is not that day-

Evening fell quick. The much anticipated arrival of it tumbled and shifted around Iris’ stomach, as Rose helped her to get ready.

Her dress was gold silk. It hung delicately off her shoulders. Looked so becoming when next to her white satin gloves. Snow and wheat gold. The puffed short sleeves jutting out like baubles around her shoulders were made with wispy chiffon. An overlay coated the whole dress. Hazy smoke train drifted behind her when she moved. Every fold of the silk pressed beautifully.

Iris sits nervously combing wrinkles out her gloves as Rose stands behind her and carefully threads red roses into her hair. Studded with pearl clips and florals. Iris feels like the most vertiginously rich version of herself there’s ever been. Perfume dropped on her neck and bosom. Diving down the meagre valley of her cleavage. Pears and honey. She blazes with the scents of those and the fresh bloody red roses in her coiffure.

Roses hands are gentle. She had a calm touch. Gently securing a couple more pins into Iris’ hair. She never snapped or tugged. She had a sweet way about her. Tonight, Iris is glad of it. For nerves fill her to the jittery brim.

She knows that soon she must be down in that grand ballroom, beside her husband, making good impressions. Introducing and delighting and stunning the local society hereabouts.

Doesn’t change the fact that even though she’s in this undoubtedly beautiful ballgown, she can’t hide from the fact that she wants to run for the bedchamber and curl up under a blanket and stay tucked under it for the entirety of this night in question.

She chides herself for being stupid and filters back into reality as Rose finishes her hair. She steps back and smoothed a few dark curling strays at the back of her neck. Iris looked into the mirror.

“It’s beautiful Rose. Thank you.” She says with deep feeling. Nervously worrying the inside of her lower lip even through her smile.

Jewels lie cold on her throat. A branching glittering wreath of buttery yellow and silver diamonds. They hang down like fat Bartlett pears dangling off a silver tree. Laying around her beautifully bared neck and shoulders.

She wonders if it’s so wise to draw such attention to that part of her anatomy what with so many vampires Kylo warned her may be in attendance tonight.

But with the devil and his hound in tow, she reckons she’s got a remarkably good chance at protection.

Plus she hopes none of the vampires would be bold enough to try anything in a room full of mortals anyhow- shes fathomed as much that the whole thing is understandably secretive.

She can’t speak from experience on the subject. The only vampire she knows is her husband. And Draegan is a whole other kettle of fish that her mind can barely contemplate.

“Are you looking forwards to tonight, Milady?” Rose asks nicely as she fiddles and fixes the last few curls. Fussing. She was very through. Making sure the pins aren’t tugging and hurting too much.

Iris raises her eyes to Rose’s kind brown gaze in the mirror reflection. She had been twirling her finger over the medallion on her vanity table. The silver one the romani woman had given her. Swiping her finger up over the worn smooth indents.

She smiles at her sweet maid. “Yes actually I rather am. Mine and Kylo’s first social occasion as a wedded couple. I hope I maintain a good impression with the company of his Bavarian Society.” She utters softly. Brow creased in worry.

“They will adore you. Milady. You’ve such a good heart. They will not fail to see that.” She assures. “All you’ve done here for the local villagers, they like you very much already.” She adds.

Iris wants to hug the waify girl hard. She wants to squeeze the stuffing out of her bookmark thin maid and thank her for the clarity of her much needed reassuring kindness. “Thank you, Rose.”

She was so used to focusing on her flaws - a habit hammered into her psyche by her rattlesnake of a mother - she forgot that she could do this. She could be brave and be good.

“Will Lord Verros be in attendance tonight, Milady?”

“I assume so.” Iris supposed. “He did come to wish us congratulations on the marriage.” She catches the corner of her maids smile as she leans over to grasp another hairpin.

Rose was such a striking beauty Iris couldn’t believe she had chosen a career in being a ladies maid. She had creamy skin and the darkest ravens hair. A dainty complexion and her brows were soft long teardrop arches. She was truly a beautiful girl.

“A lot of the maids downstairs are very taken with him. They are all so flustered when he passes by.” She smiles in mirth.

“Do you not think him a handsome man, your ladyship?” Rose asks curiously.

Iris sends her a sly smile that spoke of her inquiry being far too bold. She didn’t mind. Maids gossip. That’s a beloved occupation for the dear girls.

“He is remarkably handsome. I can’t decide what is actually the most handsome thing about him. He’s very temperate and calming.” Iris supposed. Rose looks awfully smug.

She can see how the young maids of Ranlor would be quite taken with him. They’ve never seen a man of his deadly attractive calibre.

“And that’s the most I will say on the subject.” Iris smiles coyly. Distracting herself by arranging items on her vanity.

“Very good. My Lady. Should you need anything else?” Rose asks. Stepping back and placing her hands on the back of Iris’s chair.

“Thankyou. You are dismissed. Go and have a glass of that punch McTavish has ready in the kitchen. Tell those chamber maids not to get too merry now.” Iris says. Fussing with her heavy yellow diamond pear earrings.

Rose smiles and takes a chemise folded over her arm to the laundry. “Have a good night. Milady.” She says kindly.

Touching Iris’s shoulder in comfort. She was close to Rose. They were fond companions of each other. Iris had needed a little feminine company hereabouts. She’s glad to have it in her excessively pretty French maid. Iris smiles and fussed with her earrings and the curls around her ears after she goes.

She stands and walks across to the mirror in her Duchess suite. Rose oil and floral soap follows after her, accompanied by a wave of rustling silk billowing in after her movements. She holds her skirts and listens to the soft scuffle of her slippers moving against the carpet.

She examines her reflection in the looking glass. The dress was a work of art. She only wished she possessed the confidence to match it.

Iris seized herself tall. Boldly groped towards it - the concept of confidence - and dammed the consequences.

She strode for the door and made for downstairs. Quieting old ghosts that rioted for attention in her head.

She suffocated their influence. Told herself tonight would be a wonderful party to celebrate the union to a husband she loves more than the very air she breathes.

Ranlor looks utterly astounding in the candlelight and the promise of a ball. It looked made for it.

Every surface shimmers and gleams with it. Vases of flowers sprout form every table. Beeswax candles burn bright with the homely scent. Lighting her way to the ballroom with the very atmosphere alive with petals and nectar. The whole place is blooming into beauty.

She comes into the ballroom and the sights of it lifts her soul. The garlands strung high on every wall. Candles glimmer lowly. The fire makes the usually cold and echoing room tolerably pleasant to exist in. The tiles of the floor shines baroque gold off the fire and the candles.

The table to the side is where brandy, wine, and warm scarlet negus punch, studded with slices of orange, will be served. Chairs line the room and a cluster of chaises and settees surround the fire. Iris thought that might be a sensible idea for the elder folk who attend.

Opposite the back wall, the wall of arched windows guarded by twin wheat draperies, let in impressive arches of the forest and the night sky. Netted with unending freckling white stars. It was a clear calm night. Still as a tranquil sea or a deep ink black lake. Iris smiles seeing her staff milling around. Jomar busies himself making last minute adjustments to the gold chaperone chairs.

Iris smiles to see that. He never changes from his reliable self. He even matches to the gold room with a gold dastar and a red Sherwani silk coat over his usual ensemble. Bangle glimmering bright on his wrist. Clad in the colours of his Lords crest. Blood and gold.

Iris is stood looking out the window when heavy, sure treads and a booming low voice shatters the silence. “Jomar did you tell Jonas to bolt a plank or two across Elrands stable door? Cause the last thing we need tonight is that fool horse wandering in to eat fruit off the banquet table-“ Kylo’s rattling off as he moves from the anteroom into the ballroom where his Butler is. He isn’t aware Iris is there yet-

He’ll soon get a clue. He has ears like a dog and a fiercely good sense of smell to match. He’ll scent her soon enough. She smells like soap and a bush full of red roses from the real ones she has stuffed in her hair coiffure.

She can’t help smiling wide at the mere sight of him.

He’s looking down fixing his right cuff as he walks. His hair - raven hair - shining and recently washed, looking soft as silk and flopping down over his brow as he fiddled with his cuffs and then his waistcoat.

His waistcoat is the same gold as her dress. Except it is studded with silver buttons at the closures. A white pressed cravat decorates his neck. The rest of his clothing is lost to black shadow. Wool coat, breeches and boots all a dark shade.

“I did.” Jomar says with an annoyed tone of long sufferance. As if they were an old wedded couple. They certainly bickered as one. He frowns deeply at the chairs he suspects aren’t straight. It was starting to vex his at precise nature.

Kylo’s head whips up as he senses the company of his wife. Roses and pears and honey perfume. He stops his fussing and his hands loosen to his sides. He gazes warmly at his wife.

There she is. His Lady of Ranlor. Wearing his family jewels. Great big yellow diamonds sit on her neck and ears. Flawless white gloves on her arms. Shiny gauzy chiffon and silk draping her body. She looks stunning.

“You can’t possibly be married to me...” Kylo comments with a sly grin. Slowly moving towards her. A tall expanse of black and gold and muscle. Pine cologne spiced with blackberry brambles and silky sandalwood comes with him.

Iris is now fussing with her skirts. Picking them up a touch and leaning down to look at her golden skirts and slippers. “This dress and these jewels may very well be the most grand things I’ve ever worn.” She smiles back.

A big hand slings itself around the back of her waist and she’s suddenly hoisted almost off her feet as Kylo yanks her to his front, leans down to seal a firmly passionate kiss to her mouth. Big reach of his hand entirely spanning her lower back.

His soap and his kisses surround her. She’s wrapped up in her husband for a pure indulgent moment. Lost in the pillow of his cologne and the pink bed of his lush lips. He pulls back and his eyes dance across her neck and skin like raining hellfire.

“You are radiant.” He adds in a serious tone.

Jomar sighs a loud “Ugh.” From across the room. Kylo’s jaw grits in annoyance and Iris feels her blush beat heat out her cheeks.

“Don’t you have things to be doing in another room? Please? Go and do something ridiculous with your hair.” Kylo turns over his shoulder and snaps to his Butler.

“I see you’ve already beaten me to it. I wonder, did you get caught in a tornado on your way down from the valet chambers?” Jomar quips.

Kylo runs a hand through his dishevelled locks and turns back sharply and Jomar holds his hands up. “I’m going. I’m going-“ He insists. Not even scared by his Lordships intemperate movements.

“Temper, temper.” He snarks at Kylo under his breath as he disappears out the door. Kylo wants to throw something at his retreating back but he’s sadly empty handed.

“Why do we keep him around again? Refresh my memory.” Kylo growls. Iris lays a hand on his solid arm.

“Perspective my dear. He toiled night and day helping me prepare this ball.”

Kylo looks at her deeply and growls. Not sounding terribly convinced. Filing away a thought for another time. “It’s no matter. I’ll set the hounds on him later. He’ll hate that.”

“Kylo-“ Iris admonishes. Shocked.

He doesn’t seem phased. His smile merely curls up on one side. “Not to attack my dove. I’ll just get Brutus to jump on him and lick him to death and get dog hairs all over his coat. It drives him mad.” He smirks. Winks. Awfully proud of his scheme.

She sighs and lets it lie. These two forever prodding fun at each other. She won’t get caught in the middle of it.

“Ranlor looks beautiful tonight, my love you have outdone yourself.” Kylo snatches up her hand and lays a kiss upon the white satin.

The forest outside had been brought in. Smell of it hanging everywhere just like his pine cologne does. Garlands strung up and tied with white ribbon bows. Holly and fern spicing scent in the air. Everywhere looks gleaming gold and merry, and theres a feast of a banquet to be had in the next room.

A giant roast boar with an apple in its mouth. Haunch of venison. Roast capons and goose. Fruit tarts and tipsy cake. White soup and game pie. Syllabubs and cold ices. Crayfish jelly and pickled oysters, and Pink champagne to wash it all down. The list goes on. Everyone had outdone themselves.

“I can take no credit. The staff have worked like trojans in readiness. Approbation must not be given to me.” Iris insists. Shrugging in her honest way.

“I’ve sent a few cases of French champagne and bowls of punch, pies and roast game down to the kitchens for their supper.” She adds. “As a Thanks for their toils of late. I hope they like it.”

“You’ll be more popular than I am at this rate.” Kylo warns.

But that was always a danger of having a pretty and prevailing spouse. He find he can bear the disparities between them. Have them ready to sing her praises but wary of him? That seems to strike the perfect balance.

“Cup of punch before our guests descend?” Kylo seeks. Already walking backwards to the refreshment table. Tugging her hand along and Iris follows.

They walk across and her husband fetched her a dainty glass cup of brandy punch himself, as Jomar reappears and shows the musicians to their corner. A modest string quartet of four components.

They come in and start to tune up and not long after them, the first few tenants and people make themselves known. Coming out the bitter snowy night and up the grand entrance unto the ballroom. Kylo greets them warmly. He and Iris standing by the anteroom doors to receive their guests.

The Ballroom quickly fills. Chatter and laughter and music is ripe in the air like growing fruit. Iris takes a second to scan around. The guests are dancing and conversing. The staff are too. Some are out of uniform and enjoying the rarity of this fine celebratory party. She spies many of the chambermaids drinking punch. Stood in a tight herd and giggling over something.

Only when she cranes her neck and sees the lone figure standing by the window does she fully comprehend their mirth. Draegan stands assessing the view. Iris wondered when he slipped in. She hadn’t noticed. There were too many eyes upon her to differentiate where the gazes had originated from.

She hadn’t felt his glance in her direction as soon as he came into the room. She hadn’t felt him admire after her divine beauty tonight. Watches the buttery yellow jewels glimmer on her neck. Her earrings sway. The back of her pale neck decorated with one dark curl. The red roses in her hair.

She doesn’t know how he watches her profile as she smiles at Kylo as they talk to people. Her cheeks creasing up when she beams that bright smile.

He reluctantly draws his eyes away from them both and enjoys a glass of wine. Drinks to their merriment and to the health of Lord and Lady Ren.

Iris glances over again. She was struck by Draegan wearing such formal robes. Gone was the velvet sweeping cloak and tunic of this afternoon. Tonight he wears a darker set of colours. An excellently elaborate white cravat knotted around his neck. Pinned in the centre with a glittering ruby. A white waistcoat buttoned over his tapering strong chest.

There’s a trim fitting wool black coat which ends at his slim thighs. Dark grey breeches and slate coloured leather boots come to his knees. And Iris knows without a doubt that the jasmine, berry and sage cologne he wears pours off him like bittersweet summer rain. The coat he wore earlier was infused with the scent of the salty sea near his home.

She turns back to the doorway as another family of tenants scuttle in. They’re so gracious and generous. Some of them even bring gifts. One family brought a hamper of smoked meats and cheeses. Another brought his Lordship some game in a covered wicker basket. It was their repaying the generosity for being invited to this very fine ball.

Some of the local Lords and Ladies hereabouts were also invited. Members of the gentry Kylo has not seen or heard of for years upon end.

For which there were reasons for that.

Some of them were entirely too proud. Stuck up. They rubbed him the wrong way.

They only came to look down their noses at people and gossip about the state of the castle which was remarked upon to be seen very rarely on their social calendars.

Iris pays these people little mind. As does Kylo.

She nods them sweet smiles as she’s introduced. They’d just finished meeting a fellow Bavarian Lord, a squat round-bellied little bald man, and his tall craggy willowy wife, large of nose and long of neck - who commented with a pursed face that the castle was very dim and dark. Not much prospect out the windows either.

Iris clutches over her husbands hand, soothing his temper before it explodes out of him. She could already see it lay in the grit of his jaw. Iris lays on the demure little smile towards the vile snobs.

“Do come in and enjoy. The banquet hall is just through the anteroom. I sincerely hope it’s well lit enough for you to find.” She beams.

The wife looks down her enormous nose at Iris. Giving her what can only be described as a sour look. She huffs in her Ladyships direction as they stride past, trying to maintain a modicum of dignity.

Kylo smiles at her for a lingering second after they leave. Iris returns his mirth with a grin of her own.

“No accounting for taste.” She adds. She also sincerely hopes the horrible woman spills a cup full of scarlet wine punch down her very over-trimmed dress.

She was atleast twenty years Iris’ senior. Yet she was trying to act younger than all of her mature fifty years in a low cut gown. Iris was blinded by it. Not in a nice way. It was an eye stabbing monstrosity of pearls, lace, brilliants and beads. Mutton dressed as lamb was a saying that shot instantly to Kylo’s mind.

“Lady Krüger. I knew she was a vile minded shrew-” He supposed. “Some things of society never change. Now she is an _old_ , bitter, vile-minded shrew.”

“Her prospects haven’t gained any civility then?” Iris asks. The ball gently twirling and busy with life behind them. Music fills the air. Aswell as chatter and laughter.

“Indeed.” Kylo grumps with a smile. “And I fancy Cerberus would look better in that abnormity of a ballgown.” He whispered lowly. Flinching in the memory of it.

He actually flinched when Lady Krüger came into view in that eyesore of a dress. A startled “good god.” Flew out his mouth before he could stop it. To his compliment, he recovered well. He added a polite address about the shocking cold out of doors onto his outburst.

Iris chuckles. Covering her mouth with her gloved hand. Kylo’s watching the mirth and laughter pour out of her. He watches the diamond bracelet on her wrist sparkle in the candlelight.

She regained her composure by the time the next wave of people walk through the doors. And it was indeed a whole gaggle of crimson coated soldiers. Kylo’s smile grew in recognition of their commanding officer.

He was a tall strapping figure of a man. Iris noted his allure right away. Long rakish dark hair and melting brown doe eyes. Latin charm lay in his sun-kissed skin. Made beautiful by the colours of the spotless uniform.

Iris smiles to herself thinking how much this regiment of foot would make her sisters swoon into insensibility. One look at this man and his company of soldiers, in similar coats with their dark romantic hair and weathered countenances.

Flora and Posy would sigh, fainting into a fit of the vapours instantly. Merely on sight of these Latin soldiers, they’d both declare they were in violent love with one - or all - of them. Batting lashes and stupid giggles would herald their interest.

The leader stops and bows to Kylo with a handsome smirk. “It’s been an awful long time, Ren.” He grins devilishly.

He’s a nightmare, cunningly dressed as every romantic girls sweetest dream.

He’s dressed neat as a pin. White breeches with a gold stripe running down his legs, black boots polished to a mirror shine. His coat was finely crafted to his body. Scarlet with white piping and gold fringes on the epaulettes. Dripping down his red coated shoulders. White lapels at his front dotted with gold buttons. This man kept one hand on the brass and black scabbard of a long sabre strapped to his left hip.

“Not nearly long enough. Try a few more millennia next time.” Ren smiles. Shaking hands with the man.

“Might I introduce my wife to you? Lady Ren of Ranlor castle. My love, this is Colonel Poe Dameron of the 4th Kings own regiment of foot.”

Poe had already turned to glance up and down at Iris. Melting brown eyes raking up her neckline and the jewels on her throat. Caught on the rose of her cheeks and her pretty smile.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Colonel.” She smiles.

The devilish smile grows. Showing off a sharp row of linear white teeth. He inclines his head and demurely reaches for her hand and pressed a sweet kiss to the back of it. Iris couldn’t help it. Her cheeks heated at the flirty attention.

“The pleasure can only belong to me. Lady Ren. For meeting such an enchanting beauty.” He implies. All charm and savage attraction. Kylo rolls his eyes. Always the biggest Lothario.

Poe was the biggest gold plated tart he’d ever had the misfortune to meet.

Iris smiles and withdraws her hand from his. She’s sure there have been far more exotic and beautiful women in this rogues life than the likes of some slip of an English girl.

“You are long acquainted with my husband?” Iris seeks. The warmth and antiquity of their friendship told her as much.

“Indeed we are. My Lady. You could almost say I’ve known him since the dark ages.” Poe grinned. Kylo shot him a look that was half warning; half amusement.

“We hope you and your men enjoy the festivities. Plenty of food, drink and dancing to be had.” Kylo offers.

“Me and my men are vastly obliged to you both. I’d say they are forever in need of fine civilised company.” Poe nods again to Iris.

Poe shakes Kylo’s hand again. “It really is good to see you. And settled with a pretty wife too? You lucky old dog.” Poe winks at the pair of them.

He turns and nods to his company. Before moving forwards into the ballroom and makes a beeline for the wine or the brandy punch.

His fellow officers offer their congrats and their thanks in passing. There couldn’t have been more than six of them.

Six strong men of strapping size and brute strength. Each one as charming and as handsome as the last. Their complexions all spoke of the sun kissed isle or continent where they’d been encamped. In Spain or Greece perhaps.

One soldier with overly long hair tied back in a ribbon, and a square jaw and blazing eyes, smiles especially handsomely at Iris as he passes her by. Undressing her with his eyes. As if he could see through her dress. Drooling over her bared shoulders and neck and the ample display of her bosom.

Kylo stares harder. Let’s it be known he saw that man’s eyes lingering on his wife.

“Just how far back does that acquaintance truly span?” Iris asks lowly to him so she won’t be overheard. She’s fascinated to hear the answer.

She’s a wily woman. His wife.

“Vienna. 1709.” Kylo answers for her.

He’d been a wandering traveller. A poor wayfaring stranger in a new brazen land.

He stayed in a freezing attic garret with the only decoration being a table and chair. And a single wooden bed frame.

Kylo just spent days walking around and drinking in the glory of that city. The gardens and parks and manicured posh quarter with it’s fine houses. He wandered through in his passably nice clothes. He wasn’t the richest man of the city, he wasn’t the toast of the town neither, but nor was he the lowest gutter snipe without two pennies to rub together.

He had clothes on his back. Coin in his pocket and the world was his oyster. He was just an unordinary man seeking for ordinary things.

In his wandering days, he goes to galleries to see oil artworks. Wanders parks. Drinks milky coffee in cafes, reads poetry books and sonnets, and when the night comes, he sinks absinthe drips in dingy little bars.

That infamous green drink, why It boils euphoria in his blood and the poppy opium smoke makes him feel all melting and indolent.

Absinthe is dizzying and slow. It’s almost like a new sort of blood to him.

He found odd pleasure in the romantic gloom of the poetry and art of the age in those squalid little wine bars and gloomy opium smoking rooms.

And then he’s suddenly itching for that real ichor running down his chin. Sweet hot thick. He quells his cravings.

The romantic poets frolicked around him in their big white shirts like lazy distressed birds. Wailing in despair as they wrote. The cramped back rooms of bars stuffed with Bohemian rugs and furniture became their studios, and he sat and watched it all unfold.

The lazy beat of their sadness milled around him like silky lavender bath water.

He could smell the pheromones in their sweat and their blood, like puffs of sprayed heady French perfume. He wants to smear that salty spice taste of sweat on the roof of his mouth. Coat the bed of his tongue in their copper iron blood. Taste the drugs and the drink in their veins and lounge in it’s lazy offering of comfort.

He idled away time in the corner of one of the drinking dens one night. Watching the poets reel words and the artists sketch their mastery on canvases or paper.

In the lewd company of curvy, dark haired models and prostitutes, delicately draped in sheets with nothing but their stockings on, luxuriating on chaises. Posing to be drawn. These are the women those men would later take home and fuck.

They are all one man in the same. All frivolous and fleeting. Preening dandy’s only obsessed with trying to make their ineffectual mark on the world. They won’t even make a dent. Not even a scratch in the enduring history of time.

Useless men doing useless things and thinking it makes them deities worthy of remembrance.

Kylo sat sinking more sweet sugared absinthe into his dead veins. Watching the drink bleed down from the sugar on the slotted spoon over the glass. It burned in his nostrils. That particular saccharine blend. Sweet and dark like a sweat soaked little death on a hot summer night.

One artisté in particular caught his eye; dark rakish curling hair and melting eyes and skin that spoke of a Latin descent on shores far sunnier than these. He was talking about his despairs of a woman he loved. Ranting and raving.

Through the gloom of pipe smoke and fog and drink and sticky opium. Kylo spoke. Called out to him. His voice sliced through the hazy air as if a violent knife.

“Would you die for her?” Kylo’s asking this despairing artist.

The artist focused through drunk sad eyes on the man who posed the question.

He swigs out of the wine bottle in his hands. Sloshed and sucked the red drink into his mouth. It dribbled down his chin. Pattered to his chest. Shirt stained with dots of grape purple. The poet looked towards the hulking shape in his vision. He declared right back to Kylo;

“I am dying for love of her.” He suggested. Tearing open his shirt neckline and taking a dagger to then carve the letter of her first name onto his skin, right there, over his heart.

He talks as he cuts himself. “Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.” Poe cries. Smiling through the pain.

Kylo’s teeth ache to take a bite out of the thorax he exposed so suddenly-

The poet whirls away. Drops the bloodied knife. All drunk and half agony. He told his friends in a mournful cry that he was going to write an ode to her beauty. To her savagery for breaking his heart, keeping him waiting so upon an answer. To sketch her likeness in pencil to torment him further.

An empty bottle of Chianti still in his hands. Barely any scarlet slicking around the glass like another coppery garnet fluid Kylo is so familiar with; the same one that now stains into the poets white shirt and drips in long red arrows down his chest. A bleeding letter ‘E’ sat there. He drops the bottle and lets it ooze all over the Persian rug.

He watches this poet pour out his large soul in a poem for this woman. Elise was her name. He watches him sketch her face. Such deft arcs as his hands skim the paper. He shades and flourishes and captures her likeness in perfect clarity in under three minutes.

Kylo turns away and mopes, drinks alone at the bar until another bottle of Chianti and two glasses is thunked on the bar beside him. When he looks up. The bleeding hearted poet is there beside him.

“I know why I drink in woe my friend. Why do you?” Poet asks.

Kylo’s tongue knotted up in his mouth. It’s been a hundred and fifty years and he still can’t remark on Draegan’s name without pain.

“Love lost.” Kylo answers. “Long, long time ago.” He tells. Right back in this earths infancy.

The poet fills their glasses up and up until it sloshes over his hand and drips on the bar. They sit and they drink together. Kylo tells Poe his heart is broken a long time hence - if he had one.

Poe says a man who is without heart is a safe one. Nothing can hurt him anymore. That must be some kind of pleasurable freedom.

“For we have brains and eyes. And they give us trouble and torment enough.” Poe assesses. Looking across the room at a plump, scantily clad whore, in nothing but creamy stockings. They chuckle together.

The next day. Kylo was walking in the Voltsgarten park and he saw that very same poet on his knees in front of the very woman whose initial is scored over his heart.

She wore a dress the colour of sickly pink roses. Sat on a white iron bench under a yew tree. They were rowing. A lovers tiff. Harsh words from loveless mouths echoed in the air.

She rejected him. He was a penniless artist and she will marry a rich banker instead. He has literally nothing to offer her - but his bleeding chest.

The poet cried that she was a torment worse than death. Prettier than sin. She’s telling him she is engaged to another man, and it’s over, and he wails. He will convince her of her love for him.

He opens his shirt and jabs at his wound to show her. She flees in tears. Strikes him when he pursued and tried to kiss her. Grappling her into his arms to make her love him.

The poet drowns his sorrows in whores, absinthe and an opium pipe. He sketched his lost love. Over and over, over again.

The more he sketched, the more his fame grew. He soon became the talk of the town. Sketching in the back room of the bar gathers crowds. Suddenly it was too big a crowd to fit inside the dingy room.

He gets invited to draw in grand halls and parlours. Gets solicited to attend the grandest parties in town. Everyone toasts to this poet. Sings his name over the clinking crash of cheering champagne glasses.

He grew rich. His friend. Filthy rich. Within the year he had a townhouse and a fleet of servants. Several rich women dangling off his arm, begging for his attention. He could barely keep up for his liaisons with them all over the rich quarter of town.

He fucked attractive sullen widows. Bored married women whose husbands were too old. He fucked actresses and pretty songbirds. On and on. He didn’t stop.

Kylo had been wrong about him. He truly was truly a gifted artist.

His sketches in pencil and oils brought the paper and canvas and the faces on them into life. He made his pain an occupation. It lived and breathed and ate with him - ate at him.

He buried it with the company of rich men and the distraction of women. Drowned in rich girls who wore pearls. He stole away their pretty champagne kisses and rosy smiles for himself. For Kylo too, they grew to be very good, firm friends. He told Kylo to come and live in his mansion and be weighted on hand and foot by his toadying servants.

Kylo had a permanent lodging at the poets residence. He had honour and plenty of money thrown at him. Merely for being a friend. An acquaintance.

He would often sit in Poe’s studio and orangery. Terrace door open to the garden, scent of the orange trees ripening in the sun pouring in, as he painted and sketched and drew, long into the night until he lost the light.

They drank expensively rare red wine and didn’t have to try hard to chase handsome girls. Curvy models begged to be drawn by him. If they couldn’t get Poe, they got Kylo.

A tender friendship bloomed in these spaces; between canvas, oil paints, and inspiration, wild parties and money.

If anyone offered Kylo a sneer or an insult. The poet snubbed them. And that was a cold place to be, on the wrong side of the most popular man in all of Vienna.

He famously put down someone who once laughed and mocked Kylo’s sense of dress. Poe challenged him to a duel as Kylo desperately tried to talk him out of it. Poe shot him in the shoulder. He fiercely defended his friend. Defended his honour.

Poet sells his sketches to famous galleries for coin he can drink or fuck away. He became a local fame.

He could usually either be found in somewhere highly respectable. A ballroom at the most rich address in town. Drinking with royalty and doing naughty, raunchy and satirical sketches of a russian duchess, or a one armed whore.

Or, he could be scraped out of the nearest gutter near an opium den with Elise’s name dried on his chapped lips.

The more the poet thought of her, the more he drank. The more whores he bought - often two at a time. The more crowds of rich girls he took back to his room. The more parties. He drank and partied and lived lived lived to excess.

So gone on drink and pain he could barely stand by the end of some days. He crawled inside a bottle when times grew bad. Cut himself and smeared blood over the canvas and tore his studio to pieces. Broke windows and smashed wine bottles on the walls. Raining blood. He snapped paintings, and raged and screamed.

Kylo went away for a while to see pastures new. An old friend in France who’d wrote to beckon him there for a time. He hated to leave his friend so vulnerable. Poe told him to go. Told him he’d be well. Kylo didn’t believe the bags under his eyes nor the raw rashes he was suddenly trying to hide on his palms.

Kylo came back after a few years, Ten to be exact. 1719. He had written to Poe all along and told him of his adventures. They’d kept in correspondence.

He had gone to Paris intending it to be a fleeting visit. But he sold stock, and he had stayed longer and now made his millions. Reaped what he sowed. He was fabulously rich. But he longed to see an old friend.

Poe’s letters grew shorter and infrequent. His hand most odd too. Loose and artless writing. Kylo decided it was time he went back to see his poet.

The house was for sale. Empty and boarded up. The staff have gone. The friends and models nowhere to be seen.

He found him eventually. Lodgings now in a dusty attic in the slums of town, above a reeking filthy gin and bawdy house. The madam told Kylo some “famous artist” as he so called himself, was upstairs in the attic. She snorted cackling cruel laughter telling him that.

That’s where he found his prosperous poet. The town and all its wealth had already forgotten his once good name. He’d faded from their clutches.

The townhouse was gone. The friends. The money, and the plump girls with their champagne rosy kisses and pearls. All of it was gone- just like that.

Only Kylo was left.

He found him there, and now he was really dying of his broken heart. And the pox.

One too many nights with painted whores and wealthy girls with strings of previous lovers, had taken its toll. He was long past a cure. He’s suffered with it for ten years and now it took him bad. Tore him up and made a husk out of him.

He couldn’t possess the strength to even hold a pencil anymore. Around him on the floor lay crumpled parchment with squiggled lines and holes torn through the paper where he’d stabbed through in his frustration.

His hands shook. His eyes betrayed him. He couldn’t create anymore.

Look at what’s become of the man who once had this whole town clasped in the palm of his artistic hand. His hands were no use to him now. He could barely sit up.

Kylo finds his weakened body huddled up in his wooden sleigh bed. Emaciated and so thin. Laying under a threadbare dirty sheet with a soiled nightshirt on. Paper bronze skin stretched taut over jutting bone. Sweat and death clog the air. It’s all Kylo can scent.

He excretes nothing but stale odour and illness.

His foot caught upon a creaking floorboard and the poets head snapped around to see. Kylo announced himself at the door.

This made the poet smile. Such a sorry awful smile. Harrowing to see it. Poet still recognised his brambles cologne.

“Good to see you, old friend.” The poet chuckles. His humour was always dark. He shifted his dark curly head on the sweat slicked dirty pillow. His hair was too wild. His stubble long and scratchy.

Kylo looms over his bed with a pained expression on his face. He suspects something.

He waves his hands over his friends dark eyes. His face was glossy with sweat. Eyes sunken in, the way old tombstones sink into the earth

“Well. When I say good to see you- that is of course a figure of speech.“ His chuckle dies off.

He’s blind.

He’s got a fever and he isn’t long for this world. Covered in rashes and laying in his bed stewing in his own filth.

He gropes unseeing for Kylo’s hand and he takes it. Kneels at his bedside. His arms and hands tremble. With either heat or cold or something else. His pain or a seizure.

Kylo hurts for his friend. He strokes his sticky hair. He tells him he’ll go for a doctor. Clinging onto hope.

“I couldn’t afford a doctors fee.” Poe swallows down the lump in his throat. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need too.

Kylo stays. Pulls up a chair and demands to know what happened. He fetched his friend water and tried to get him to eat. Tried to help him sit up and bathe. Made him eat some more. Helped him shave. Fed him drops of gin off a spoon to dull the pain.

They both slept fitful. Poe kept calling out to check if he was alone still. Kylo always answered him.

He stays as the inevitable draws nearer and nearer. Kylo sleeps up there in the cold attic. By his bed. In the uncomfortable chair. Five nights he stays. On the sixth day, he’s worsened.

“You still there?” He calls out in a rasp. Like a lost boy.

“Yes I am.” Kylo answers softly. Wiping his friends hot brow.

“Pity.” Poe jokes. Spluttering a hacking cough thereafter.

Kylo frowns.

“I’d always hoped I’d die in company of a pretty fat whore, writhing on my cock. And too much wine heavy in my belly.” He jokes.

Kylo wrings out the cloth and sighs at his friend. Smiles. Pats the sweat away from his head. Wipes the back of his neck. Moves away. Silence again. A minute later. Poe asks;

“Are you still there?” He cries. Hand flailing for him.

“I am.” Comes his answer again. “I’m not going anywhere.” He pledges.

“I don’t want to be alone.” Poe sobs.

Kylo kneels by his bed. Strokes his tacky hair and holds his hand. It can’t be this way can it? Ending like this. Losing one of the dearest, most passionate friends he’d ever known.

Watching this emaciated artless thing lie in this bed. It was like a shadow of him. An awful echo.

The poet cries and wails to Kylo about _her_ \- that woman who shunned him years back. Why didn’t she love him? How could she not love him? He asks a million questions to his friend and as the sun sinks. His life slips further and further away out of his fingers.

“I can save you, you know.” Kylo whispered to him. Crying. His knees rubbed sore from the cold hard floor as his poet takes his last shuddering few breaths. Gulping for air and weeping so much.

“Let me save you, Poe.” Kylo asks. Begs. “You have your art. Your poetry. You have things to live for. Good, ordinary, everyday things.”

“You can create. That’s so powerful. It’s so _so_ powerful. Use it Poe. Create again. Please. Breathe again and keep breathing-“ He begs. Clutches so tight to his hand his nails sting.

“It’s too dark.” Poe wheezes. Shivering with cold even though he was gushing out heat too.

Kylo wets his lips. He’s never done this before. Not to a mortal. But Draegan had told him now. He knows what he has to do. Hope is looking grim.

“You’re still here.” Poe splutters. Almost in disbelief. Nearly laughing with it.

“Everyone else left. They all left.” Poe whispers.

Kylo’s curses the names of those stupid vapid men and women who only clung to Poe for his money and his fame. He wanted to shout and rage and kill, tear open their necks and eat their hearts, and tell them that Poe was better and kinder than the whole damn lot of them put together.

He waits for that scarred chest to sink down one last time. He watches the air crackle out his lips. He waits until he’s certain death has taken him-

His poet is not of this earth anymore. There’s no more pain.

“I can’t let it be like this.” Kylo’s shaking his head. His warm eyes full of silver wet.

He lifts up the collar of his damp nightshirt. “I-I can’t-“

Then he leans up and bites and tears his friends neck open and flushed dark and new terrible life back into him.   
  
  


Now, Kylo watches that very friend across Ranlor ballroom chatting up and making eyes at the pretty girls. Savage smile as if its never known pain. Some things do truly never change.

That confident stance Poe possessed was virtually lethal to impressionable young ladies. He watches a gaggle of housemaids speculating at the man with pink cheeks. He curls that smirk and shoots a flirtatious smirk at them. The music starts up. Iris is sure he’ll have one of them soon for a dance.

He and Poe hadn’t seen each other in quite a long time. But he was pleased to know that the man remained staunchly the same as the man he knew. Flirty and wild with life. Brimming with promiscuity and, honour and humour.

And still he drew. He sold sketches from time to time. But the years moved him onto a new vocation. He found the army.

He was also the only person Kylo’s ever personally turned. He felt that as he sat there watching Poe’s life slip away, that it was unfair. The man had so much more to be, and so much more to do. In part that was why he saved him. He’d been so moved by the poet.

“He certainly seems very... engaging.” Iris settles. Turning and smiling at the handsome colonel as he stood with his back to them. Drinking punch and making their housemaids quiver with excitement.

“Too charming for his own bloody good.” Kylo insists. They welcome another tenant through the doors. The ballroom now brimming with plenty of people. A sea of silk dresses and colours and varied life of all sorts.

Iris peels away from Kylo’s side for a moment to check everything was hale downstairs. As she moves through the ballroom, and anteroom, she’s impeded by numerous interjections from grateful tenants. Ones she’s visited who call out to her by name. They tell her it’s an honour to be at such a beautiful occasion. She thanks them and replies in kind that it’s lovely to welcome them.

She eventually tracks down her housekeeper through the thick crowds in the supper room. Some of the men started a card game in the parlour across the way. Smoking cheroots and sipping brandy. Jomar is serving them. A footman took over the punch table and a scotch reel causes much joy in the ballroom. It was an informal gathering. So her and Kylo didn’t have to put much merit in opening the first dance.

She hears laughter and much merriment everywhere she goes. And when she finds Mrs Jones in the kitchens, she assures her Ladyship that everything is going swimmingly. There’s plenty of food and wine. And that, along with a lively band, held the answer to the trick of capably hosting any successful ball.

When she eventually makes her way back to Kylo, it must be a half of an hour later. A tenants son asked her to dance. He was tall and gangly and very sweet. Iris gladly accepted. They had a fun time dancing to a longways country dance.

A bouncy number full of lively steps. Iris laughs and dances. Feels the jewels on her throat shine and spin. Her skirts fly and curls of hair at the nape of her neck fly as she dances. Happiness sparks in her veins.

There really was no greater jovial felicity to rival dancing.

Draegan thought so too. A smile gently pulls at his lips as he watches her dance down the line. Such pure and sweet mortal happiness. It tugs at his ribs to see it. She remained perfectly unawares she was being watched by the pale devil drinking wine by the window.

She felt the blood churn it’s supple pink warmth in her cheeks. The giddy laughter lingering on her lips. When it finishes she stands and beams a grin as she catches her breath, and claps her thanks to the band in the corner. Curtseys to her partner who thanks her in nervous Bavarian. Telling her what a good dancer she was in broken English.

He was a nice boy from a good family. Iris steers him for a new partner onto one of the chamber maids she knew was keen. The girl, Marie, stood on her own simply begging for a dance. She watches him bow to her and ask for her hand in the next.

She resumes her quest of searching high and low for the singular hulking frame of her husband. She spots him eventually. Stood near the brandy table and talking to someone with whom Iris was not yet familiar.

She could spot his acquaintance from a mile off. It was impossible not too. He was talking to, possibly, the most striking woman Iris has ever seen.

She could spot this woman’s gown from a mile off. Anyone could. It was a furious big gathering of lush raspberry pink silk that made Iris think of sweet crushed berry cordial. Bright and staining, cloying, like lipstick or rouge. Feminine, saccharine. Iris had never seen this style of gown before. It belonged well in the last century.

She’s decadently displaying a robe a la Francaise. A dress made popular by the ladies of the king and queens court in France. A courtesans dress.

Overly wide hips made possible with collapsible panniers strapped to her sides. Her petticoats and pink skirts draped over them. She can see the peek of ruffles and pink lace peeping out the bottom of her skirts like a dusting of sugar atop a dainty cream cake. Sweet layered on sweet.

Engageantes hang a long collar of frothy lace down her elbows. Her pinned bodice is overrun with silk peach bows. The same colour ruffles as runs stitched around her plunging square neckline. Breasts bared daintily and one marked with a heart shaped artificial beauty patch on her left breast.

This striking woman moves her arms, lifts her pink champagne to her lips to slip its bubbles slowly down her throat. Rouged lips the colour of cherries. Her dark skinned cheeks are bruised with a kiss of pink blush that barely stands out. Another beauty mark coquettishly perches on the corner of her fine smiling mouth.

Her complexion was as stunning as her appearance. Doe brown eyes the colour of cinnamon crushed with honey and brown sugar. Soft brows framing her perfect face. An angelic sort of beauty about her.

Iris can’t make out the Caribbean curl of dark hair, for its hidden under a brushed blue powdered wig, skewered with a collection of sprouting white and pink feathers and silk blush roses. The feathers drift lazy in the air as she moves, smiles, and talks to Kylo.

She’s not within a foot of this woman yet and she can already tell that everything about her screams voluptuousness and self indulgence.

Jewels on her arms, pale rings of fat jewels, light pink, pale blue, yellow and gentle sea foam green, placed delicately on each manicured finger, a silk pink ribbon tied around her long neck with a flower and ornate gold broach pendant dangling against the hollow of her throat.

She couldn’t look anymore divine if she tried.

Iris steps across and the woman turns and smiles at her as she comes near. In the hand that didn’t hold a champagne flute, there sits a ruffled peach fan, bursting with roses and lace. Looped over her dainty wrist, held in place with a string of pearls.

Iris feels enchanted with her already. Kylo turns and sees to whom the fabulously dressed woman directs her smile. He beams at his wife as she draws near.

“Come my dear,” He holds out his hand to Iris and she takes it and steps to his side.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” He tucks a hand to her back and brings her into his embrace against his side.

“Iris, I’m delighted to introduce you to Madame Céline Odette Donnet, The Comtesse of Chaumont, and a very dear old friend.”

Celine raised a perfectly arched dark brow.

“Less of the old. If you don’t mind. I’m not exactly dust yet.” She japes to Kylo. Snapping her fan shut where she had been fluttering it at her face. Her accent is throughly, ruthlessly French.

“I am vastly happy to meet you at last. Iris. My dear. I cannot tell you how happy. He talks of you so fondly. And now I see why.” She giggles merrily.

She teasingly swipes Kylo suddenly on the shoulder with her fan. Rapping his big muscles.

“You failed to mention her stunning beauty to me. My dear. You are _exquisite_.” The woman leers kindly to her. As if she wanted to gobble her up in one go.

Kylo looks down to his shoulder. Her hit was as ineffectual as a peck from a baby bird. But he’s amused by it.

“Still possess that sweet kindred spirit. So I see, Céline.” Kylo’s joking with her.

Iris likes this woman very much already.

She sweeps forwards, a raspberry pink galleon in full sail, and presses a continental kiss to each cheek. Iris is smacked in the face by her perfume.

A soft precious assault on the senses; like everything else about her. Accent, clothes, smile. It’s all a soft pink trap.

Candied French perfume of sweet, vibrant wild violets in a shaded Versailles wood, powdery amber, mingled with tea roses from the Queens garden, petals luxuriating with dotted rain. It’s sweet and it moves in the air with her as she does.

“It’s an honour to meet a friend of my husbands.” Iris smiles when she pulls back. It felt like Céline’s perfume now clung cloying to her dress from merely being pressed into an embrace with the woman.

“Have you travelled from France, Comtesse?” Iris seeks as Kylo hands the ladies each a fresh glass of frothy pink champagne. Freshly poured.

“Call me Céline darling. We’ve no need for titles here among friends.” She shoots Iris a sultry friendly wink.

She steps forwards again and loops her arm easily through Iris’s as she stands talking to her and Kylo both.

“And actually you are in luck. When I received the invite, I was only an hour away in my Bavarian Château. My hateful husband had it built here and modelled after our house in Toulouse. He said if he had to reside in Germany, he had to make the awful surroundings seem more French.” She offered with a careless shrug.

“Heartless snob.” She adds with a scoff. Sipping her champagne.

“Oh, is the Comte here too?” Iris asks innocently. Scanning for any sign of him in the crowds.

Céline smiles. And it’s all fox and cunning.

“No my dear. Thankfully that odious man died many years ago. Fell down the stairs and snapped his neck. Such a tragedy.” She smiles. Sighing.

Céline catches eyes with Kylo and Iris senses a little flicker of something unsaid pass there between them.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Iris frowns deeply.

Céline doesn’t look saddened in the least.

“C’est la vie. I got his money and his title, and I’m suddenly the richest most eligible woman in southern France. I’m not sorry my dear. That vile man deserved far worse. And he got it.” She rallies her spirits with another disarming pretty grin.

“So now you see? I am far better off without a husband. I only court men I like. And they must be rich and fun or else I throw them aside and move onto the next.” Céline clinks her glass with Iris’s and chuckles like they are already fond firm friends.

Céline looks over at Kylo as she talks to Iris about him. They are suddenly confidantes. Whispering behind fans as they talk about the boys they fancy in candlelit rooms. Intimate friends who gossip for sport. She gestures to Kylo with her closed fan.

“I have known your husband now for many years. Mon Chou. Do you know, I have never seen him smile quite so much. I attribute that solely to you. Dragging him out of the shadows and gloom he so likes. Like a medieval monster.” She grins. Ribbing his tendency to hole up in this castle and be a shadowy recluse.

“My moniker of another name.” Kylo defends with a grin.

Eyes switching to Iris to send her a warm loving look. Iris feels it’s influence slide along her spine like hot syrup. And flourish heat in her cheeks.

“And so when I received the invite for your ball. I knew I simply had to come and see for myself who finally captured his heart.” Céline smiles.

“Are you here alone, or is some poor tormented man lurking after your treads like a baying puppy?” Kylo’s asking.

Céline makes a noise of indifference. “I came with a...friend. He went off to gamble away and play cards. He’s at serious risk of boring me soon.” She rolls her big brown eyes. Flutter of her lashes long, dark and sensually thick.

“Who is the lucky man?” Iris asks.

“My Russian grand prince. Comes from a place that sounds too frightful to utter. My darling Ivanov. Face like an angel but as rigid as a fire poker. Tres sérieux. He’s a second son- So naturally he thinks he can get at my fortune and woo me onto my back and into easy seduction. He’s quite gruff and artless sometimes.”

“And no man is getting his filthy paws on my money for so little for as long as I have breath in my body.” Céline promises. As serious as death. Yet her smile softened the blow of her impactful words.

“Maybe I will give him a chance to redeem himself and buy me more diamonds and jewels?” She adds in afterthought. “He’s such a sweet puppy of a man really. You know, I asked him to buy me a palace in Russia. He bought me three.” She chuckles, satisfied.

“He took me ice skating on the frozen Neva. We rode a horse-drawn sleigh through the snow. We stayed at the Winter palace as guests of the Tsar and Tsarina. It was wonderful.” She smiled dreamily.

“But- you are so fortunate my dear. Kylo has an exquisite taste in jewels.” And nudges Iris.

“That is rare in a man. They care so little for such decorations. They do not understand the appeal of a clutch of diamonds.” She chides all of mankind for lacking such a trait.

“My intentions for choosing jewels were strictly dishonourable.” Kylo’s leering into his glass. “I do love to see such a pretty neck so finely dressed - and undressed.” He winks at his wife. Who blushes crimson all over again.

Céline laughs - a tickling musical laugh like the call of an exotic songbird. Throaty and smoky rich.

“I do adore you. Now- if you would both excuse me. Did my eyes deceive me. But I believe I saw Draegan around here somewhere?” She starts. Looking salaciously intrigued. The way she pronounced his name sounded so artful.

If Kylo is annoyed. He doesn’t show it. “He is.” Comes his answer.

“I must go and greet him. I haven’t seen him since the Hundred Years’ War.” She chuckles. Blowing kisses.

“Au Revoir, darlings. Iris- you must come to tea at my Château soon. I’ll leave the address with your Butler. Oh, and do leave the husband at home. Bring the pale devil. I do so adore him.”

Kylo raises a brow at being so excluded. “I’m omitted an invitation to Château Donnet?”

“Of course. Because at tea, we will be girls saying salacious things in private company. Far too filthy for the ears of a husband. Bring Draegan, mon chou. That one can stand a little of our devilry.” She winks.

Waves them adieu as she glides away. The flutter of her hand rattled the pearls on her wrists. She went off in search of her russian puppy. Iris caught on the way the train of her dress - the Watteau pleats in the fabric, swept out behind her like a pink cloak as she moved away.

The raspberry silk galleon smelling of violets moves off into the crowds. Picking her graceful way around the dance floor

Iris turns to kylo. “She’s-“ she smiles. At a loss for words. Stumbling in the best way.

“She’s certainly something.” Kylo agrees. Céline was as vivacious as a flutter of spring sunshine. Or a herd of butterflies. Or the bubbling pink French champagne she loved so much. Heady and delightful. As decadent as all hell.

“Is she?-“ Iris begins.

Kylo’s smile reached his eyes. It answered it all. “Yes, she is.”

Iris suddenly knew what that look they’d shared was about.

“Her husband didn’t die accidentally did he?” Iris seeks quietly.

“Oh. He fell down the stairs.” Kylo’s grin sharpened. “ _Twice_.” He leers.

Somehow. Iris remains un-shocked. “She didn’t like him?”

“No word of a lie crossed Céline’s lips. Dove. Her husband was a vile mannered rat.” Kylo snaps. A bastard who never should have stood tall.

“He married her for her money. He abused her. Belittled her. Beat her. Raped her on numerous occasions to beget her with child. Spent her money and drove them close to ruin. When they found out she couldn’t bear him heirs. He beat her to within an inch of her life.”

Iris’s mouth gaped.

Céline was so full of a zest for life. She was fun and generous from what Iris could glean. How could a bright woman like her deserve to be wedded to a man who subscribed to such wicked treatment of his beloved.

Céline was sold to her husband like chattel and he used her cruelly. Something about that gets Iris deep. Sergeant Hux had not been a man prone to using his fists. She hadn’t been inclined to find out about his indifference.

Iris clasps Kylo’s hands. “That poor woman.”

“I think its a story best saved for the Comtesse to tell you herself, over your invite to ladies tea.” Kylo leans down and kisses the hand he holds. Looking out across the ballroom with her.

“Is this you sparing my sensibilities?” Iris asks with a crooked brow. Not wanting to be caught out by anything. “Because-“

The last thing Kylo wants is her to be caught unawares or hurt by items of his past. Especially of last lovers.

Kylo’s smile is drawn back . “We were lovers. Once. For the briefest of times. It was mechanical and loveless. I was there when Draegan turned her. We both were. She came across us. After her husband-”

Iris nods. He clasps her hand back.

In part, she understands. The damsel had found her two knights in shining armour. Not only did they offer her life. They offered her the means and power to return justice tenfold on the man who single handedly orchestrated the violent event that caused her death.

“I’m sorry someone with as lovely a soul had to suffer so much brutality.” She tells him.

She’s looking after in the direction of the ebullient Céline Donnet.

She’d found Draegan and he smiles genuinely to see her come across to him. They embrace and she kisses his cheek. He puts his hand on her back and they smile warmly at each other. Draegan grins and it’s all teeth and friendliness.

Iris feels something roll over her stomach at seeing them together.

Knowing Céline would possibly have had both those men. Loved them. Known them. Been intimate with them. It makes her feel horrible stabbing hurtful things. A passing grace of an awful thunder cloud spoiling a summers day.

She looks back up to her husband. There’s nothing but sheer honesty in his face as he caresses her hands and looks down at her. His expression is all pinched with concern because he’s opened up about yet another lover to her. A vampire this time.

“A thousand years my love. I know you haven’t been celibate in all that time. And I know you didn’t cloak yourself in misery for centuries in this castle like a mad recluse. You saw the world and all the beautiful exotic things it contained.” She holds his hand.

“There’s no shame in it. Even though I do admit, I’m riddled with envy to think that you’ve been fooling around with a _demimondaine_ in your time _._ I’m sure by comparison I must be vastly inexperienced for such a varied man’s tastes.” She teases about herself. Looking up at him from below her lashes. Coquettish. Places her satin gloved hand on his lapel as she talks to him.

Kylo’s hand lands firm and gentle on the side of her hip. The one facing the wall they’re stood near so no one else will see. He chuckles warmly and the lovely crows feet creases bunch up by his eyes. He looks at her with such devoted love it makes that previous jealousy shoot out of all reckoning and mind.

“You, my little delicious bluestocking wife, are worth ten thousand demimondaines.” He tells her. Leaning in and kissing over the shell of her ear. To onlookers, it appeared as if he was giving her a great secret.

“Lord Ren. You are quite scandalous making me blush so in public.” She chides breathily as he pulls back.

His eyes rake heat over her skin. Blistering. His hand tugs her into him just that bit closer. Hang if this was proper or not- he just wanted to love his wife.

“You’re marvellous when you blush. Especially when you blush right down to your breast.”

Iris leans up and kisses the side of his cheek. “Enough. Scoundrel.” She smiles. Just in time to see a beckoning hand of Jomar wave to her, call her over, across The ballroom.

“It looks like I’m needed to attend to things. Might I trust you to yourself for a little while?” She asks her husband.

“However will I cope?” He asks. Giving her puppy dog eyes. She parts with a squeeze to his hand. He scents her pears and honey perfume and listens to the swish of her dress as she steps by him.

Iris is called across to be told one of the housemaids got a little too giddy on the punch. So Rose and another maid friend, Mia, might have to be excused tonight from undressing her Ladyship, to tend to her drunken sickness. Iris understands. Truth was she was more than happy to undress and dress herself. But that’s not how Ladies of the gentry did it.

Jomar and Iris do share a slight giggle at the fact. His goatee twitches as he tries not to laugh even further. Drunken maids. Whatever next?

“I wager the poor dear will need something soothing in the morning for her head. Jomar.” She predicted.

She adjourned and goes to grab a plate of something, some game pie some roast meat, and she sits and talks to her tenants. She dances the Cotillion with one of Colonel Dameron’s charming red coated friends. She has some more champagne and another dance and she’s quite whirled off her feet.

She ends up having to steal a moment away to herself.

Kylo was busy with tenants. Céline was in the supper room with her russian friend. Draegan she hadn’t seen for some time. Maybe the party had been too much for him. She hopes not- Kylo said he was fond of mortals and gatherings. Maybe he was getting more wine. Or sat fireside somewhere in an unused parlour.

Everything was running smoothly and Iris takes her leave by one of the doors at the end of the ballroom. Leading to a hallway that came back on itself to the parlour overlooking the end of the castle.

It was lit with beeswax tapered candles in on every table and dresser. Just in case anyone needed a quiet space to retire too. The music or the heat of so many packed bodies grew too much.

It’s a lovely parlour with bookshelves and carpets and settees. No fire in the hearth. The one lit opposite bleeds through heat from the far end of the grand ballroom. Warmth seeps through the thick stone. Makes the atmosphere pleasant enough but not stifling.

Three small stone balconies jutted out of the ceiling to floor terrace doors. A fine view out over the woodland treetops. High up above the forest and caked in snow. It was quiet and blessedly cool from the hot clasp of the lively ball in the next room.

Iris crossed the room and pushed open the door, she moaned gladly as the icy air kissed her skin cruelly. Lapping her in frost and bitter Bavarian snow. She was awfully hot and now the diamonds choke cold on her throat once more. Sparkling snow casts brilliant light back out in drips all over her neck.

She was still dewy and out of breath from her dancing. A coil of hair had come loose at the back of her neck. She huddled herself by the door and drinks the pink champagne that was left in her glass. Her breath fogging up hot over the cold glass flute.

It tasted like silky creamy roses. A zip of blood orange lingered on her tongue after she sipped it down. The cloying bitter of its sting burned her mouth in the most pleasant way.

She shuts her eyes and lets the empty glass rest down by her thigh. As she stands at the door and lets the winter take away the heat of her skin. Sky dominated by a pearly crescent moon. White milky brilliance of it splashed all over her face and dress.

She listens to shift of the powdery snow in the trees. The rasp of it drifting on the howling wind. The cry of the wolves riddles the horizon. Sharp in the forest air. Echoing. She takes a breath. A deep draw. Tugs that clean ice air into her lungs and lets her thoughts roam away.

“Alone at last-“

She twists around quickly. Startled by the voice and the intruder who came with it. She feels and hears a gasp rattle out her mouth. A wisp of silver on the air as she turns.

It’s one of the Colonels men. The red coated one with the square jaw and the dark long hair in a ribbon. The one who’d leered at her breasts on arrival. He was unshaven and had pale eyes and a much too wide smile that suggested it knew of its handsomeness.

“I don’t believe we’ve been acquainted.” Iris says thinly. That causes a chuckle.

“Mortal customs. How cute.” He tilts his head and takes a long slow drag. Scenting her in the air. He hums a moan at her taste.

He’s leaning casually against the doorway she’s just come through. One shoulder clasped against the wall. Arms hanging loose. His redcoat is unbuttoned and Iris can smell strong drink - and it isn’t coming from her. Bitter almond brandy drifts across to where she’s stood.

His eyes are unattractive. Fixed on her just like his unnatural smile.

“The old wolf certainly caught himself a pretty bitch.” He sizes her up from head to toe.

She sees fangs when he opens his mouth and spewed those vile words in a leering grin.

A shaky breath rattled her chest. The glass almost slipped out her hand. She tried to remain strong. Steel her backbone. This isn’t the first time a foul stranger had tried to paw at her in private in the half-dark.

“I need to get back to my husband.” Iris presses calmly. Even though she felt anything but.

He glares at her for saying it.

He pushes himself away from the wall and saunters closer. “I’m usually not a one for another mans sloppy seconds. But you do smell so inviting-“ He curls his tongue around the word.

“A sweet little bitch in heat.” He growls as he comes close.

Iris steps back more and she’s out on the terrace. Teeth grit. Trying not to let her lip wobble in fear. Shoes crunching on the snow. Half in, half out the castle.

The vampire in front of her strikes quick-

He presses her back into the concrete balustrade. Hand pushing at her stomach until she’s stopped by it. Snow resting there bleeds wet and cold into her fine gold dress. The glass she holds smashes at his feet. Crunches under his boots.

She fights him. _Oh_ , she how fights him. But he is strong. Grip is as unyielding as iron.

He shoved her into the balcony and pressed her there. She struggles with her arms and legs both before he has her pinned. There’s a cruel cold hand around her throat. Jerking her upper half backwards. Threatening to push her back.

“You struggle. I push. You’ll fall. Such a long way down...” He threatens. Sing-song of a taunting voice.

“That old dog can pick all the little broken pieces of you up out the bloodied snow for all I care.” He cackles cruelly.

He smiles wider as he shifts hair off her neck. Cold diamonds digging onto her skin under his palm. Her ragged breathing amplified. He presses down so her blood pools up under the skin. Licking his lips to lean forward and take a mouthful of her neck-

She whimpers and screws her eyes shut. Not knowing what’s worse; The bruises she’ll get from this struggle. The fall off this balcony to the jagged rocks below. Or the fact this terrible vampire is about to drink from her-

A hot tear falls and kisses her cheek.

The parlour they exited puffs suddenly to pitch black. A shuddering flicker and the candlelight is slaughtered.

Iris feels the weight of something he is not quite able to judge.

The vampire before her retracts and moves back. Concerned. Looking into the empty room he’d vacated behind him. Eyes scanning around the darkness that the moon hasn’t reached yet. He snarls. Hating being interrupted on a feed.

He lets go of her neck and snarls as he steps into the parlour. “Show yourself, you scum!” He snaps. Aiming at the shape he saw lingering at the door. A pale flash out the corner of his eye.

A terrible cry wrenches from his throat as he thuds onto his knees as if he was grappled there. Tugged by a force unseen. Like he was dangling on the end of a rope that had just been pulled sharp and taut.

Iris watches as the veins strain in his neck. His skin tense with pain. The vampire on the floor writhes and gasps and chokes. Soon, no sound but gasping air comes out his mouth.

He is strangled from the inside out. He’s clawing at his own neck. His skin. Raked with bloodied fingernail scratches as if he didn’t care he was taking the skin away.

Blood starts gushing from his mouth. A sickening frothy gurgle, it rushes slick and wet from him and from his middle his skin starts to blister and crack. Bubbling up like a sheet of tar.

She’s spellbound by the sickening sight.

She shrinks back on the balcony. As what’s left of the soldier withers away like scorched paper. Black and grey and curling with fire at the edges. A pile of embers buried in black dusty soot in the splayed shape where his body had laid. His cries still ringing in her ears.

Her eyes are transfixed upon that very spot on the rug. Her eyes screaming at her brain that this couldn’t possibly be what she just saw. It begs for clarity. It begs for reason- But there’s none here to give.

She sees a pair of dark grey boots come into view where she’s gazing. Scuffs his heel and swerves it harshly over the soot and ashes. Stubs out the flame. Extinguishes the last little flicker of an ember. Life is gone.

Iris looks up. Lifts her teary eyes. Shivering in the cold, seeing her saviour standing close before her.

She knows what she could sense that the vampire could not.

She could smell jasmine and death. Who else could it have been? 

Draegan takes her hand and draws her in out of the cold. Stands with her clasps her hand. Icy blue eyes scan her face and her neck. She hadn’t been bitten.

“Are you harmed?” He asks. She recognised the pinched frown crowning his brow was that of worry. His hands are on her arms.

Iris blinks up at him. Confused searing tears sting at her cheeks. Her mouth cracks open but no sound seems to come out. His jaw grits tight seeing the bastards fingertips pressed raw red into her neck.

“How-I.” She cries. Struggling.

Draegan glances down behind him. His mouth a serious line. “I’m sorry you had to witness that.” He mutters gravely. He did look truly sorry.

Iris feels sick and her head is spinning. If he could do this to a vampire, a being whose strength outweighed a human's by a lot, what could he do to a mortal... That knowledge has her wanting to shrink away for the fear the same will happen to her. But then again- she was still standing. That must mean something.

“Come with me. I’ll have someone see to that pile of filth later.” He growls calmly. Slowly draws her hand into his.

Iris swallows. Numb. She lets herself walk with him. His hand on her lower back guides her. He holds the other one as tenderly as she ever thought possible. His skin deliciously pleasant warm.

It lays decadent sparks on her skin. His touch. The velvet soft of the grain of his coat rasps her arms too.

She finds she suddenly just wants to curl into his chest and be kept safe.

He walks her out the parlour and away from the scent of charred blistering death. He tucked her close and opens the doors. Back into the heat and noise and crush of the ball and all its people. Men and ladies twirl on the dance floor. Skirts and jackets arc in the air from the graceful dancers. Gold baroque shimmering hall engulfs her in its finery once again.

Draegan leads her inside and towards the fireside. Where a certain French vampire sits in her arrestingly bright raspberry silk dress.

Her big pannier hips taking up half the settee. Giving her heeled feet a rest. She’s sipping more pink champagne when she turns and catches Draegan escorting a rather green faced looking Iris into the ball.

Her expression changes in a second. Her smile pinched into something solemn. She stood down her champagne on the table next to her. Her butterscotch eyes narrowed at the pair of them. “Mon amour. What is wrong?”

Draegan takes Iris’s hand and leads her around the chaise. She sits next to Céline and the woman gathers Iris’s cold hand. Scoops it up into her own. Pays attentive care to her.

Céline’s very clever eyes catch quickly onto the fingertip red marks on her ladyships neck as Draegan had spotted.

“Are you alright my dear? What happened?” She asks. Eyes and tone full of concern. She looks pleadingly up to Draegan. Flutter of her long lashes as she looks upward.

“Someone from that militia company dared to try and take advantage.” Draegan announces quietly.

“I’ll leave her in your charge, Céline. I’m going to find Kylo and I think, Iris, you could benefit greatly from a glass of wine.” He supposed. Making ready to move off. Silk hair swaying about his shoulders.

Iris reaches out and catches his coat sleeve before he departs. He turns back and gazes down where they are touching.

“Thank you.” Is all she says. And she means it with every ounce of her heart. She detested being and feeling scared. He had helped her.

Draegan looks tortured for a moment. He daren’t show what he truly feels. Or his rage, why, it’ll burst out of him like a firestorm tempest.

He withdraws his hand, ducks his head and walks away. Back straight. The willowy sway of his walk is enchanting to watch.

Iris sags down next to Céline. Who was still holding her other hand. She fills it with a fresh glass of champagne she has standing by.

“A tipple. Mon Chou. It’ll help.” She promises. Iris believes her. She drains the whole glass til it stings her throat.

“Does it hurt?” Céline asks Iris. Touching to her own neck in gesture. Rubbing her hand soothingly. Iris had only met her an hours previous and now the woman is holding her hand in fiercely loyal love and protection. As protective as a mother bear defending her cubs.

“No. Not really I think just- the shock of it.” Iris says. Finding tears welling up again. She felt so angry and disgusted. That man made her feel ashamed and dirty in her own home. She wants to go back in there and stamp on his ashes.

“New sires.” Céline scoffs angrily. “They are like mongrels.” She adds. Clasping Iris close and folding her into a hug. Producing a lace handkerchief that smelled of sugar and roses to give to her friend. Tutting in comfort at her tears as she rubs Iris’s back.

She pulls back to dab at her stinging eyes. Céline looks at her with sorrow and love.

“If Draegan hadn’t done it. I would have gladly.” She promised fiercely. Shifting a sticky lock of hair out of Iris’s eyes as she dries them.

“Men.” She rolls her big beautiful brown eyes. “And people call me scandalous or vile for using them exactly the same way they have used us for millennia? They don’t deserve us one bit.” Céline points out. Remarkably forward thinking. Iris quite agrees.

She finds she actually smiles at that comment. She used men for money or for what services they could provide in the bedchamber. She likes that forthright and unimpeachably honest nature in her new companion. She’s missed her sisters. Céline made her feel that. The ache for feminine company. Camaraderie.

A worried Kylo appears on the fringes of the crowds. Making his way to them fast. Draegan does not reappear. Her husband is wearing such a stiff face full of anger.

“A storm approaches.” Céline remarks. Iris sees why. The giant wall of muscle that was her darkly dashing husband could have grown men fleeing in tears at the sight of his rage and wrath. He was heading their way fast as a flash flood.

Iris barely gets a chance to get out words. But Kylo is there by the settee, on one knee before her. Cupping her neck.

“What happened? Are you well? What-” He scans his wife up and down with a tense fretful expression. Looks at her eyes. Her neck. Her hands. Looks for spots of blood on her dress. Signs. Anything.

Iris clutches over his hands. Cutting him off with calm serenity. “I’m well. Kylo. Please don’t fret.” She assures him.

His jaw sets hard like concrete and his eyes turn foul seeing another man’s fingertip marks jamming raw into her neck. Below the richness of the diamond stones and her jawbone. There sits a faint blush pink collar of fingertip clutches. He tips her chin tenderly to get a better look.

“Who did this?” Kylo asks seriously. Iris has never seen such torment cross his face. Whiskey brown eyes so solemn.

“Draegan already took care of it.” She tells him. Putting meaning into the potent stock of her words. He sighs and leans back. Putting his hands on her gold knees.

“My love. I’m fine. Rattled perhaps but I’m contented. And you have tenants who I’m sure are far more deserving of your attention and time than I am.” She points out.

“I’m not leaving your side.” Kylo’s insisting loud and stubborn.

Iris cups one cheek. She can feel the heavy iron set of his bones. The rage tensing him sour.

“Now’s not the time to have a attack of Viking stubbornness, dearest.” She says with love. Kissing his cold brow.

“After all, I’m with Céline now. What could possibly happen to me?” Iris asks.

Kylo’s drawing back and looking at the woman beside his wife. “I have one person to discuss business with. I won’t be long. Can I leave her with you?” He asks.

Céline smiles a kindly grin. “Trust her to me. She couldn’t be in safer hands. You know this, Mon Ami.” Céline persuades Kylo.

Kylo looks like he doesn’t want to drift away. But thus with a parting kiss to Iris’ hand. He does. He cups her hands and strokes them. Worry ebbs at his heart as he leaves. He gives every red coated soldier a fierce glare as he passes them by. Let’s them know they weren’t welcome any longer. A few take the hint and leave. Poe stays to dance and drink.

Céline turns to Iris as they sit with the fire warming their backs. Watching the ball.

“That is a loyal man right down to his bones if ever I saw one.” She comments. Iris smiles back.

“Yes he is.” She agrees. “I am undeserving of such a husband.”

Céline eyes Iris very scrupulously. Mirthful. “I meant Draegan, darling. He looked like the world had fallen out from under his feet.” She points out.

Iris swallows. Wondering why he hadn’t yet returned to her side- it did make the mind churn with thought.

One of the red coated soldiers suddenly approaches Iris to ask after a dance where the ladies sit.

Céline makes a great show of placing her hand across Iris’s on her gold silk lap.

She straightens her head and Iris has never seen a glare so cold. Frost churned in her warm eyes. She looked rightly terrifying.

“If we ever stoop so low as to need something from a penniless man whore. We’ll ask for it. Run along now.” She looks him up and down snidely. He backs away with an amused smirk at her feistiness.

“I don’t suppose I could claim you for a dance, my sweet?” He croons tauntingly at Céline. Holding out his hand to her.

“Offer anything to me again, and I’ll take your arm off, mongrel.” Céline snarls lowly. The soldier smirks and retreats for good, making a purring noise to tease at Céline for her catty nature.

Iris smiles at it. Céline was vicious indeed. She’s awfully inspired by it. Having such a protective friend certainly did cheer her up some. She clasps her hand. If anything else this ball had brought her. She was glad of it revealing the company of a new friend.

The ball presses on and the night draws out slow and long. Eventually the tenants start to make for home as the snow starts again. The rich guests summon their fur coats and slip into the fine boxes of their waiting carriages.

The musicians pack and leave. The last of the tenants finish their game of cards and their conversation. Drifting off into the snowy night. The fine evening of Ranlor’s grand ball draws to a close.

Somewhere near one in the morning, Céline bids Iris a goodbye. Kisses to both cheeks before she takes to her carriage. She tells Iris to come to take tea next week. It’s a firm deal. After hearing about Château Donnet and the famous Versailles inspired gardens, she finds she can’t wait to see it in person.

Céline departs with a flutter of a wave. Hooks her arm onto a rather stern looking tall, wavy-haired blonde russian, with a wiry moustache and a pristine blue uniform, who waited on her at the door.

He nods curtly to Iris in a very Baltic way as he escorts his amour out the doors. The bloom of bright roses and violets following after Céline in the air.

Iris sits back on the chaise. Her back thudding into the pillows. She toes off her slippers and listens to some member of staff cleaning off the brandy table. Milling around in the quiet din as the candles burn down to yellow pools. Flames lazy. All too soon her she’s growing tired. Smothering back yawns and her eyes are too heavy to fight off anymore. Her neck is sore. She feels like she might be hoarse tomorrow.

The fire burns to almost nothing. Half dark cocoons the room in churning amber and gold. Blazing off the floor tiles. Night and rest ebbs in after the hive of activity.

Draegan comes back into the quiet room. Headed for his chambers. He spots Iris huddled up asleep. Knees pulled up, stockinged ivory feet curled together in rest. Both hands slipped under her right cheek. The beautiful dress trailing gold down to spill across the floor.

He stands for a moment. Observing her. The fire had burned to nothing. She must’ve been cold. He walks slowly closer. Quiet. For fear of waking her.

He reaches over and pulls the blanket laid on the side of the chaise, up and along her body. Keeping her warm. Tucking it around her shoulders.

Kylo watches him do this from the anteroom doorway. Such a tender gesture. Coupled with his furious defence of her this evening. He frowns mildly.

Draegan stands back tall, and looks down at Iris for a second. His hand cupping over her shoulder. He does nothing but look. And then he makes to walk away.

Kylo moves into the room. His treads announcing himself. Draegan turns and catches him there. He stands with his hands loose at his sides as Kylo walks closer. Closer. Close enough to talk.

His lordship nods at the footmen surrounding the brandy table. He wants privacy. “Go to bed. Do the rest in the morning.” He orders succinctly. They’d been on their feet all night.

They nod their thanks. Taking their leave. The two men left stand in a crushing silence until the footsteps cease. Quiet heralds their solitude.

“I know what you did for her. Earlier.” He says softly. Nodding down to Iris who stayed asleep.

“Thank you.” He speaks evenly. Honestly.

Draegan looks down for a second. As granite faced as ever. He nods only once. Only lightly.

“It was nothing.” He offers simply. Not locking eyes.

“It wasn’t.” Kylo’s telling him with finality. It was a whole lot more than nothing. She could’ve been hurt. She could’ve been- right under his nose. He feels rotten and he lets himself feel it.

They share eye contact for a mere few seconds. Old connections swimming in their consciences. Burning in their chests. Words that were never settled upon. Closure that never came.

“It was a beautiful ball.” Draegan concludes.

“Goodnight.” He says. Turning away. Kylo watches him go. A black shadow out in the hallway. Swallowed up in to the night. Disappearing trail of jasmine and sage followed him. Everything but the strike of his pale hair moulded to darkness.

There had been nothing else to say.

~


	28. Decadence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We’re team Draegan in this chap ok? But that doesn’t mean we don’t love Kylo. Cause we do

As much as Kylo had told Iris about the long and bitter winters that took hold of Ranlor, she was amazed to find that domineering crush of snow starts to thaw and melt away.

A few new hints of spring begin to usher in and take the harsh winters place.

Sunshine blazed medallion gold over the woodland. Birdsong becomes more frequent. Thick and musical in the air of a morning. The tips between the dark towering trees no longer blazed with frost and ice. Water drips down the branches and patters to the forest floor below as that very same golden sun melts away the stiff snows clasp.

It certainly feels like a flush of new warm spring; in the weather and the people. The sunshine seemed to perk up appetites and romances long dulled by the harsh winter.

No two more so than Lord and Lady Ren;

After the bustle of the successful ball, Ranlor falls back into easy routine. But there’s something about it that enchants- even the servants seem happier. More inclined to cheer. Their beloved castle is alive and well again.

Maids receive flowers from their sweethearts. Footmen step out with their sweet girls. Walking into the village. People are courting again. Even the grumbling cook is of a good merry mood - whistling a jaunty tune and being kind to her helpers. Mrs Jones, Jomar and Iris suspect she is in love. Even that grumbling old woman has a paramour who makes her feel like a girl again.

Spring and romance is heady in the air like the scent of summery roses and perfume and tulips now blooming in the neatly arranged gardens. It’s delirious and delicious to be around. Iris smiles at such jovial surroundings.

Her and her husband seem to be taken with a new wave of desire. She’s heard of usual marriages that the bride and grooms honeymoon period is supposedly over rather quickly; they appear not to subscribe to this. Kylo is suddenly twice as ravenous. She must confess, she is stirred too.

A simple afternoon tea turns into a wicked session of pleasure. They tried to take tea together once a week if they could. Kylo lays his letter writing and business papers down for an hour to take tea with his Lady in her study.

As usual, he arrives in the room and presses a kiss to his wife’s supple cheek as she stands from her desk and goes to pour them tea from the silver service Jomar has bought in.

They are quite alone, Iris likes to pour tea for her husband.

He likes the strong smoky lapsang blend. Gunpowder tea and no wonder; the notes are most in taste with his character. Black tea leaves laid in bamboo baskets and smoke-dried over glowing pinewood embers. It reminds Iris of the autumn air of his woodsy cologne. It’s served in beautiful oriental China pot, gold and black swirled with patterns and paints.

He knows what his dear sweet wife likes. She prefers the sweet earl grey. Perfume and bergamot. Iris likes the blend studded with dried petals. Dried sunflower, mallow, hibiscus and rose petals. Purple, gold, pink and red. A decadence of a drink.

And she takes it with two thin golden yellow slices of lemon from the trees grown in the hot house. Perched in the amber tea. Kylo has the kitchens have that blend bought in especially for her. Whatever the cost.

He likes kissing the sour snap of lemon off her lips after she drinks it. Finding the perfume of it in her mouth as he ravages it with his own. He likes teasing her with the smoky wild taste on his tongue.

He sits on the chaise by the fire and smirks up at her as he holds his cup up and she steps forwards and pours the smoky tea for him. A hand on his to steady his arm. Unable to ignore the press of his honey black eyes on her.

She darts a look across to him. His face is veiled. Playful. “What is it?” Iris asks him. Frowning in mirthful confusion. Touching her face where his gaze is fixed. He was staring as if she’d sprouted a pair of horns out of her hair. Or if she’s got something like an ink stain or a item of dirt marring upon her cheek.

With such heat in his eyes, who would need a fireplace?

He lets her put the teapot down. His hand retracts. Pulling to his side to rest naturally on the green velvet chaise. He says nothing.

“You know. I don’t think I want tea...” He declares unexpectedly. Iris looks over into the scheming eyes of her husband. His eyes say everything that his smug smirk doesn’t.

Kylo casts the priceless teacup suddenly over his shoulder. It smashes on the floor and steaming tea spatters across the fine tiles. Iris can’t even follow its movements.

Kylo grabs her arm and launches her onto the chaise. Making her fall over his thighs. Back to the cushions, he’s over her immediately. Throwing her skirts almost up to her ears, his body between her legs. Hungry mouth on hers or her breasts.

He fucks her right there. So fast and sudden.

Pulls himself out his breeches and slams into her. She tells his name in pleasure. Legs curls around his thrusting hips and taut ass. He nearly rips her bodice in half to get to her bosom and suck and tug her nipples with his teeth. She listens to how their sexes slap lustfully together, wet and loud and so so brutal.

Iris knots her fingers in his hair and tugs. She wants him to growl and - by god - she gets it.

He ruts her like a hound, in her study in broad daylight at one o’clock in the afternoon. Spills his cum in her deep and works them into a respectably indecent rumpled sweaty state. Likes how she climaxes so hard, she shakes and shudders as if being exorcised of a demon.

Not likely. The demon is above her. Joined inside her still. Mouthing at her nipples with a handsome smirk straight from hell itself.

Kylo doesn’t stop there- of course not. There’s a mania in his blood he needs her again.

He pulls her up and makes her kneel on the cushions facing away from him. Hands on the back of the settee. He stands and takes her from behind with his hands either around her throat or cupping her bosom. Clutching her hips when he pumps her deep and cums once again. Pulls back and admired how creamy she is. Sticky all over his cock. Dripping with them. Mania indeed.

He’s insatiable. She’s only just learning how much. He has her on any flat surface going. Middle of the day. Middle of the night. Any time he liked- she can’t deny she likes the act too. How could she possibly not? He ensures her pleasure again and again and again.

She drops her sweet thighs open for him with a smile. Never denies him. He never can resist his wife when she does that. She knows how that hooks to the wild beast in him. Calls it’s tune and rises to meet its feral nature. As if a masterful hand tugging on its reins. She curls her fingers around those controls. Kylo knows it. Iris is a ringleader to that beast.

He drags her out of bed one night to teach her a lesson. Them both still rumpled and dripping from his fucking her silly before bed. He makes her put on the nightdress he likes so much. The one with split flowing sleeves. Makes her look like a medieval temptress - or an angel from on high - in a Raphael painting. Shapeless and the linen laps flowing at her ankles. He pulls on his dressing gown. Tugs her arm to bring her somewhere with a filthy promise on his smiling lips.

Turns out that somewhere is the grand library. Wall to wall gilded bookshelves and parquet floors. He opens the doors to the terrace and lets the midnight moonlight spill in on them. Iris asks what they’re doing in here.

Kylo shedded his gown - no shame in exposing himself so fully. Maybe it was the moon that fired his lust. She suspects as much.

The moon isn’t even its full bowl of round pearl yet. It will be in a few days time. She knows she has another feral night of her beastly vampire lover to look forwards too.

She looks like some ancient Druid goddess. Stood there in the blinding white light of a spring midnight. The cold air perking her nipples to resentful cherry stone knots. Hair kinked and wild down her back.

Now, he walks towards her, in all his tall bare state and kisses her. Desperate and deep. He pulls her to the nearest settee and gets her straddling him. His promise from the other day whispered into the shell of her ear came into fruition.

He hadn’t forgotten.

She shivers in pleasure as his hands cup her aching breasts and he rubs his palms flat over her throbbing nipples through her gown;

He teaches her how to ride him.

She takes his cock deep in her clutching heat. Deeper than ever before. The pleasure seats right into the pit of her belly. She moans with it.

Getting braver with each second as she sinks flush to his front. Moving her hips slowly back and forth as Kylo smirks and pants up at the sight of her like this. Her clit grinds on the patch of wiry hair at the base of his cock. His big hands spanning her waist feeling on her body as she moves. Grinding on him. He makes her keep the gown on. She feels like some divine deity riding the devil. Naughty as all sin itself.

He throws his head back to moan gutturally as he spills inside her, big chest rising and falling, and she admires his beauty so plainly as she climaxed too. Sparks zipping through her skin of pure pleasure.

She watches him as she sinks back down from the fluffy clouds of heaven. Feels their thighs shivering together with the phenomenal bliss of their endings. She likes how his skin is clammy to the touch. Worked up. She lets her eyes wander over the moles on his chest and neck like the most admirable black constellation against his creamy skin. The juxtaposition of him is astounding in its beauty. Dark and light. Ravens feathers and milk.

His sharp sharp white smile is now showing in his groan.

She places her hands on his sweaty naked chest and leans over to kiss him. He cups her head and does so roughly. Sits up to meet her. Their teeth clack and their lips mash together in a sticky hot kiss.

Kylo asks her if she liked her lesson. Iris blushes. Tells him she may need more practice.

Kylo sinks back down the chaise laughing. Chuckling that dark laugh. She feels his body bounce where she’s straddling him. The mirth wracking through him. “You keep on at me like that. I won’t have the stamina.” He winks at her. She knows that isn’t true.

They disentangle themselves and Kylo throws her over his shoulder to carry her back to bed for some sleep - maybe for some other things too.

Everyone is merry. Everyone has a spring in their step and a quirk in their smile. And as the week passes, Iris’s invite for tea at Château Chaumont draws ever nearer.

Her night of sleep before her date to tea is a blissfully short one. Kylo had his wicked way with her for hours upon hours- her nails digging in on the headboard of their bed as he stuffed a pillow under her hips to raise them up, and fucked her slow and powerful for hours.

She can still feel the kisses he pressed onto the side of her neck, her cheeks, her temple. He whispers to her so gently as he fucks her so deep. Owning every glimmer of pleasure in her veins. It calls to him. He knows it.

He makes her late in the morning too. When the sun comes up.

After a hour or two of a lie in and a tray of breakfast for them both. She has a rose petal bath and wraps up in one of her lovely wrap around tea gowns. An icy blue. Robins egg blue. Rose piles her hair up in a fancy arrangement. And suggests some sapphire and pearl drops in her ears and a simple pale blue sapphire statement necklace of modest beauty.

Iris dares to step back into hers and her Lordships bedroom for a second. To fetch her stockings she’d left on the floor the night before. They were her favourites. The ones Kylo bought her in the highland. Stitched with blue thistles on the thighs with the grey velvet ribbon garters.

She’s in somewhat of a hurry. Well aware that it’s an close enough to an hour in travelling to Céline’s Château. She wants to politely arrive in time at noon. She should’ve known not to put a time limit on the obstinate vampire such as her husband.

He’s lounging in bed still. Sits up on his elbows when he sees her come in the room. One leg bent up out the crimson covers. The sheets that were barely covering his groin. That leg sways as she comes back in and his smile grows. “You do look lovely today, little dove.” He beams at her.

She hears him sit up as she approaches the bed. She finds her stockings on the carpet and he sits up. Greedy look in his eyes. “Let me.” He begs naughtily as he watched her bend down. His hand itches to wander the shape of her plump little arse.

He loves helping her lift her skirts and fix her stockings up her soft thighs.

She hands him the stockings and lets him pull her onto the bed and sit her down. He kneels naked on the carpet and ducks his head under her skirts. Pushes the cloud of her linen petticoats up to her knees. Smiling wickedly as he kisses her kneecaps.

She knows that gleam in his eyes. She’s well aware of what it wants-

“I can’t wait to taste you on your courses. Your bleeding comes soon doesn’t it? I can scent it approaching. I wonder would you let me taste you during them?” He asks amongst his kisses. Sloppily kissing her thighs.

Her breath skips at the insinuation. Him requesting after something so intimate. She bites her lip nervously. “Let me think about that request.” She gasps.

That was a good enough answer for him. He buried his smile between her thighs. Kissing over her mons. Over the curls of hair there that clings with the scent of the rose soap she’d used. Turkish roses and the soft sweet bare essence of her scent. All woman. His woman. Her cunt. _His heaven._

“I cannot be late to tea.” She warns Kylo as he leans forwards and his hands cup her naked hips under her chemise. His nose nuzzles more against her cleft. Stroking over the downy curls above her pussy that he’s mad in love with. He drags his tongue through the wiry soft hair.

Kylo smirks. Arches one lordly brow. Mumbles kisses into her thighs.

As it turns out, she is indeed late down to meet the carriage to take tea. Mainly because her big wicked husband laid her legs over his shoulders and shoved his tongue in her hot cunt.

Lapped and licked and brought her to delirious orgasm before he let her go. Tells her he wanted her to sit at tea with the flock of fine ladies, with her husbands spit and her own orgasm sticky and drying in between her thighs. He smiles against her clit as he makes her cum on his tongue.

She rushes down still righting her clothes and her coat and her bonnet. Kylo walks her down. Raggedly dressed in his rumpled clothes from yesterday. Iris fussed and fixed with her appearance the whole way downstairs.

Kylo’s smug as anything. Proudly boasting clothes that spent the night crumpled on the floor of their bedchamber. He looks dishevelled, clothes undone, hair a rakish mess, and Iris knows that is every inch of his intention.

He walks her along the corridors and out down the hallway leading to the stable courtyard. Not even feeling the thawing chill set in the air in only his shirt - untucked to his breeches and the tails hanging down covering his thighs. His waistcoat swings under his armpits too. Not done up. If his precise Valet caught sight of him like this, The poor man would faint. She knows Kylo cruelly enjoys vexing him with such things. He was a terrible sport. She could see that boyish Viking once more in that nature of teasing of his staff so.

Iris rounds the corner of the stables. But a husbandly hand fisting in the back of her wool coat hauls her back. Kylo spins her into his chest. Hands clasped over her ass. Her hands resting against the dips of his divine chest through his shirt. He nuzzles into her. Smells her hair and her perfume beckons his name.

She doesn’t admire him for long. He sinks his head low and kisses her sweetly for such a brute sized man. Encircled in his arms she feels so small. Swallowed up. But cherished. She’s always felt that way. He leans in to chase the kiss for more as she pulls back. His lips wet and sucked red, he smiles at his wife.

“Whatever am I going to do without you today?” He asks her mischievously as Iris tries to fix a wrinkle in his shirt. Really it was a sea of cream wrinkles - she doesn’t know why she’s bothering.

“I’m sure you can find something to keep you occupied for a couple of hours.” She answers his moody plea.

“Nothing occupies me better and more throughly than you.” He mumbles against her neck. Kissing the teeth marks he made last night. Dark and sweet violet vampire kisses.

Iris rests her brow against his shoulder as he leans down and nibbles her neck. Her thighs clench when she feels his sharp fangs scrape against her skin to tease. She gasps breathily.

“You are being petulant. My Lord.” She smiles. Trying not to laugh at the sensation that gets her blushing. He buried his nose and mouth in her warm neck. The crook he loves sinking into.

He’s fighting a losing battle. “Have a nice tea with Céline, and try not to let her tell you too many scandalous stories.” He asks. Gently plucking a coil of hair off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. Callused fingers rasping her skin as he goes.

“She looks to me like the kind of woman who has nothing but scandalous stories to tell.” Iris supposed honestly.

His grin is a thing of devilry. “Though do get her to tell you the story about the King of Spain. That one is my particular favourite.” He laughs.

Iris daren’t go too far into that explanation for fear of what she’ll find. She shakes her head and smiles. “I’ll try to remember to forget that.”

Kylo smiles smug in agreement. “I shall say no more.”

She tries to pull away but Kylo’s hands are anchor on her hips. Keeping her tethered to him. He kisses her again and moans into it.

“You really have to unleash me now. I’m late enough as it is.” Iris chides desperately. Cupping only part of his jaw in her tiny fingers. Stroking his stubbled jawbone.

“For the love of god, and my cock, Hurry back.” He urges her. She blushes and kisses the tip of his nose.

“I’ll do my best, you scandalous flirt.” Iris promises. Stepping away from him and clutching her reticule tighter in her hand. Thankful no one was around to hear his filthy words.

She rounds the corner into the stables. The cobbles dusted with wet hay under her feet where the frost has melted. The brazier is lit and she sees the carriage is already prepared for her. A bay and a big black horse side by side. Tacked and ready to pull them to their destination. Sampson is just brushing down Erland. Who kicks up an enormous fuss when he catches sight of Iris coming close. He shifts in his gear and it clacks as he does.

She bids the stable hand a good morning and of course, fussed her diva of a horse for a moment. Sampson smiles. Telling her about Kylo’s plans to have Erland produce some offspring with Kana sometime soon. Kana was a colt of ripe age and he wanted to replicate the good stock of Erland and that mares pedigree in his future horses. Sampson jokes that the old boy isn’t getting any younger.

Iris strokes her Stallions velvet nose and gives him a handful of oats. “Well. Erland. It appears you are due a lady friend.” Iris remarks to him. He snorts and nudged her shoulder. She tries not to smile too much in thinking how much a baby foal Erland might vex Kylo greatly - more so than the adult version already does.

The silly horse sticks his ears back and his eyes roll back a little white as he nuzzles Iris’s bonnet. Rather tempted to nibble the plain brim of it. She’d no idea horses liked chewing on velvet but apparently this one does. Trust Erland to be the exception.

“Hmm. Now I’m not so sure I want more than one of you on this earth...” She accepts as he snorts into her hair recognising her pear perfume. She slips a gloved finger under his nose band and yanks him back to maintain eye contact.

“One manifestation of a cheeky devil is plenty.”

Erland tried nickering and nibbling her cheeks in apology. Hairy wet hay ripe in her nose as he tries to nudge her swaying earrings. Hot horse breath snuffled over her.

His ears suddenly prick and he arches up. Standing to his full eighteen hand height and looking over her shoulder. Rattling his reins at someone approaching behind her.

She turns and isn’t surprised to see Draegan walking up behind her. Rounding the corner to the courtyard. A tall ushering manifestation of the snow itself.

Iris sees today they are unknowingly clad in similar colours. He wears a shining sapphire tunic of brocade satin. So blue. Rich blue like a navy dark sea or unforgiving twilight air. Smooth hair clasping down his shoulders and onto his chest. Dark breeches and slate-grey leather knee boots. Another one of his sweeping handsome velvet coats swathes his body. This one is a bright icy silver lined with lighter whisper-grey silk.

He looks like a winter eclipse. Ice and frost dancing on a silver lake. Cold and devilish yet his smile warms her sunshine to the backbone to see.

Even Erland doesn’t quite know what to make of this figure. The horse who was sometimes scared of overly large puddles or dried scuttling leaves blowing in the wind. And he can’t fathom the person now walking towards him and his mistress.

He quietly chuffs, hiding his big head behind Iris just in case. She was safety. She was harmless. Half his size and he’s cowering behind her like a shy child hiding behind his mothers skirts.

Iris smiles as she pats Erland’s strong neck. “Good morning, Lady Iris.” He says gently as he steps up close to her. She grins friendly back at him.

“Draegan.” She greets. There’s something sacred to him about the way she says his name. All his years on this realm and no one has ever said his name so sweetly. Not even all the lovers he’s taken. Not even Kylo muttered his name as sweetly. No one can compare-

Erland whinnies. Determined to have his share in the conversation. Draegan looks across to the steeds black glittering eyes.

“This is Erland. Kylo’s- and well, my, horse, really. Obstinate creature that he is.” She introduces. Lost in the warm nirvana of his eyes.

Draegan smiles and steps past her and draws his hand down Erland’s nose. The stallion is instantly enchanted. Iris likes to see how he isn’t snobbish of animals. He cares after every living creature. It’s remarkably refreshing to see.

Her mind flickers back to the way he had turned that animal - for lack of a better term - to dust to keep her safe that night at the ball. She recalls that. One look and he could destroy. It’s astonishing to see this half of him. The caring side. She suspects it truly runs deep. But she could not forget the visceral nature either. It’s savage and it doesn’t lurk hidden. She won’t forget it.

“Nice to meet you Erland. My, what an impressive beast.” Draegan flatters. Erland nudged up into his hand like a fussing dog. It makes him smile to see. He had character and there was no doubting that.

“An interesting stallion to be sure. Percheron?” He asks Iris. Stroking a curled knuckle down the flat bone between his eyes. Erland’s eyes almost fluttered shut at the pleasure of his touch. Iris watches how the hematite ring on his finger, and one set with an oval sapphire, catches on the amber sunshine.

“Yes he is.” Iris remarks. “And I oft think he’s part lap dog too. Much too wily and affectionate of me for his own good.” She jokes. He had a cheeky temper that reminded Iris of the terriers on the farm back home. He acts for all intents and purposes, like a giant silly dog.

Draegan looks to Erland. Assessing as if he could understand them. Knows he’s being discussed.

“I wager he knows just exactly where his affections of you, land him.” Draegan compliments. Patting his nose and turning and smiling warmly at Iris.

“He’s a daft old thing. But very sweet.” Iris supposed. Erland tried to nudge his head into her ribs for her saying that. She scratches his ears and up his thick wiry mane. Along the hill of his muscled neck as he lowers to sniff at Draegan for some unknown reason. Sniffs at the ends of his jasmine smelling hair laying white down his chest.

“So. We are bid to Château Chaumont this afternoon...” Draegan seeks. Walking across and opening the crested carriage door for her. Abominably tall. He barely had to reach up to unlatch it.

Iris almost chuckles. “Summons from a new friend.”

Draegan raises one of his dark brows. “Céline’s summon’s don’t go unanswered. And that’s for ones own safety.” He concludes.

Iris nods. “I had suspected as much.” She says with mirth. He reaches out a pallid hand to her. She hesitates only a second before taking it.

She reaches across her gloved hand and settled it into his curled open palm. Breath skipping as she did. She put it down to the cold air sneaking in her lungs. Made them shrivel up and wither. She’s sure of it.

She holds her skirts up and ducks to lift herself up into the carriage.

“I do wonder why I was summoned instead of Kylo?” Draegan asks curiously as she settled onto the scarlet velvet bench inside the night-black wood carriage. She sits on the far side. Making room for the vastly tall man to slide in after her.

“I daren’t ask. But there too I suspect a mischievous motive. Apparantly she wishes to discuss things much too scandalous for the ears of my husband.”

“Too scandalous for Lord Ren? Now that is something.” He chuckles.

Draegan looks down and smiles. Iris breath catches in her traitorous chest again. She’s never seen a man be so handsome when he beams. Especially in profile. The way is eyes crease. His toothy ice white smile. That’s the way he was literally designed. Her stomach churns and roils in seeing him smile that way. As if she harboured a silly schoolgirl crush.

She could see how he might’ve made an excellent angel, this demon. Such ethereal beauty.

“I wager Céline thinks I can better stomach her devilry?” He seeks, looking a touch salacious. Intrigued by the prospect.

“Those may have been her exact words.” Iris nods.

He nods in understanding. “We’d better make haste then. I don’t fancy upsetting the vicious Comtesse by arriving late.” He smiles.

Draegan curls his fingers around the door. His rings clack on the wood and he joins her inside the coach. The driver takes his place at the front. The horses hooves shift on the cobbles. Eager. Iris can hear Erland snorting to get going.

A great gust of his fragrance bursts across the small space to her. Succulent white jasmine flowers on a bed of salty wood sage and elderberries. She was growing so used to that cologne. It nests in his hair. Beats out the soft velvet of his cloak. Soaked into his garments like a sponge taking in water. It’s dazzling.

He’s by no means a small man. Nothing about Draegan Verros is small. He’s tall. Not as stocky and thickly set as her husband. Draegan’s physique is tapered at his chest. His legs are lean, but solid as the trunks of birch trees. She found it completely baffling how he was taller than Kylo. She didn’t think that was even possible. But here he was. Lean and towering.

Their thighs touch where they sit in the narrow cradle the carriage offers. Lurching a little closer as the carriage jolts off into motion. Iris swallows back her awkward thought about their bodies moulding together and distracts herself looking out the window. Watches the thawed loveliness of Ranlor’s surrounding forest. The trees dripping melted snow onto the crushed pine needles and foliage of the damp woodsy floor.

“I thought there was nothing more beautiful than a cold winter here in Bavaria. But it appears I was wrong. Spring looks as if it will be equally as handsome.” Iris remarks as she looks out the window. The melting snow shimmers prettily in the sun.

If she ever found silence lapsing, her automatically bred response as an English girl, naturally, was to fall back on commenting about the ever mutable weather.

“I’ve seen the grounds in many seasons. It seems to suit them all.” Draegan agrees. Iris notes how he leans slightly behind her to look out the same window. She feels the gentle sweep of his hair brush against her coat sleeve. The ebb of his nearness and the hush of his voice resets that squirming warmth in her belly.

She crosses her gloved hands in her lap. Turns to him as the woodlands spur them on by. A blur of grey and oozing white and green.

“Have you been to Château Chaumont before? From what I understand of what she told me at the ball it’s certainly a most handsome house.” Iris asks him. Brimming with questions.

Draegan turns and meets her eyes. Always direct. Never shying away. Nothing about him was shy either. She’s mesmerised by the clarity of his pale eyes. Like dipping her toes into the lush warmth of Indian ocean.

“I have been to her residence in France, it is a very charming Château. But I have yet to see her house here.” He tells.

“I’ve taken tea with her many times.” He adds. “She and I were very close a long time ago.”

Iris hates how that sent a pang of jealousy through her. A bolt of lighting. Or a striking arrow. It pierced her stomach and flooded in something altogether unpleasant.

“I did see how she looked to you at the ball.” Iris nods. “It did suggest something of intimacy.”

Draegan calmly nods a smile. “She is a remarkable woman. She always was and still is, very ahead of her time. Céline was always things that women were schooled never to be. She was vivacious and stubborn and she refused to be quieted or tamped down.” He smiles in recalling.

“Admirable qualities indeed.” Iris says honestly. Still fingers of jealousy are wrapping around her heart hearing him so plainly admire another.

“That’s what I noticed about her, all those years ago. Being married to a man who defiled her, dulled her and misused her.” He explains. Turning his regal head to look out the window his side. Iris can hear muted notes of pain and anger in his voice.

“She was lucky to have someone like you to give her a new lease of life.” Iris comments.

Still looking out the window. Draegan smiles. Idly stroking his fingers along the sharp edge of the pane of glass where it met the wood. He slowly looked back. Able to gauge how her eyes were on him.

“As I understand it, your marriage to Kylo offered you your freedom too.” He seeks.

Iris feels heat creep along her cheeks. “I must admit, it did.” She shifts in her seat. Blushing now his attention was on her. His eyes so unyielding in their gaze. Yet somehow they remained soft.

“Freedom from a loveless marriage match wasn’t it?” Draegan asks as if he doesn’t already know.

“Marriage intended only for money, position and heirs.” Iris explains.

“Then thank goodness for Kylo.” Draegan smiles lightly. She nods.

“I thank my lucky stars daily.” She supposes quietly.

Draegan nods. Understanding passes between them. Heavy and solemn like a blanket wrapping around them both.

“You are both enormously lucky to have found each other.” He says with such gravity it almost breaks her heart. He did love Kylo. She could see it in the silver-blue ice of his eyes. Iris never even considered for a second how hard it might be for Draegan to see his first love so fiercely love another.

Some wounds even a thousand centuries can’t heal.

“Forgive my asking. I can’t help but be intrigued and curious by how he was when you first met him.” Iris speaks up gently. “You’re the person whose known him the longest-“

She wants to say ‘ _loved him the longest’_ but the words don’t make it past her tongue.

Draegan’s smile widens. That answers her question.

“I suppose he’s not much different to the man you know now. But he was barely beyond a young man when I first met him. A man in battle.” He tells her.

Iris finds such tender affection in his words. She’s heard tale from Kylo of his Viking upbringing. Long into the night she’s asked about his brothers. His mother. His father. She asked about it and he told her. They grew up in a modest house. His mother was a warrior and leader of their clan. His father was the very same. Took to the sword after sowing his crops. It wasn’t such a savage time.

“Kylo grew up helping his family work their land. His parents were farmers and warriors both. Jarls in their own right. Leaders among their clan.” He tells.

“Kylo spent time helping sow and harvest crops and make grain, or go and fish and hunt game for meat for their table. He spent an awful lot of time keeping his two scampish brothers out of trouble. Punishing them for their pranks. Providing for his family. And protecting his homeland when war broke out.” Draegan tells her passionately.

Iris could see Kylo in her minds eye. Growing up among such simple salt-of-the-earth folk. Thralls and Jarls. Hunting and fishing and letting the land sustain them and feed them. She could picture her husband there. The same stature but less wrinkles of age by his eyes and stresses hunching up his shoulders. A boyish smirk on his manly face. She could see him in a woven linen tunic. Most likely dyed a grey or black. Simple plain trousers made of animal skins and leather stitched shoes on his feet.

She could picture him with his long hair all braided. Pulled and plaited off his handsome unforgettable face. Shoulders swathed in coats and dark layers to survive the cruel winter. That wolf claw scar peeking through the neck of his tunic.

Iris thinks upon what would have happened had Kylo not gone to war. Not taken up the sword and sailed the world.

He might’ve found a sweetheart in the snowy plain he was brought up. Maybe one night a sweet norse girl with long hair, would have caught his eye in the long house when the Viking clans came together in the village, to feast and celebrate, and tell stories around the fire.

He might have gotten betrothed and married to that sweet girl. Had a summer wedding where the bride wore a crown of wildflowers in her hair. Kylo would have built them a longhouse with his bare hands, all of their own, near a stream where they could raise children and keep goats and chickens, and farm the prosperous land. They could’ve grown old and grey and stooped together, watching the children grow.

He didn’t get to partake in any of that. Kylo’s future as a Viking was violently rewritten.

“He was injured when I found him. I came across him. In the woods in the aftermath of battle.” Draegan tells her with a great degree of feeling.

“My command came across a small encamped enemy company in the woods one night. No more than two hundred of them. Kylo among his troops were an opposing force trying to protect the land we were trying to conquer. We left none alive.” Draegan explains morbidly.

“He cut down a great many number of my army. But he was weakened from fighting and someone had struck a sword in his side.” He caught Iris’s eyes and she could see the sadness welled in them.

“Even in dying he still managed to slaughter ten of my men. Protecting his lands and his people from our tyranny. But he was losing a lot of blood fast and was too tired to fight anymore. We’d ambushed them so quick they didn’t even have time to pull on their armour. His wound was by the stomach. Fatal.”

“As I approached him he used the remains of his strength to try and fight me off. On all fours in the snow and the blood like a beast. Clutching his injured side.”

Draegan can remember seeing the huddled dying shape of him. Hunched and bleeding in the innocence of the white snow. A sword had split this young soldiers side. A white and red split on his leather tunic oozing black scarlet into the snow. Drip drip dripping his life slowly but surely away.

Kylo was sagged against the ground, laying among the broken shattered pieces of what remained of his men. They’d all been massacred and cleaved. Ripped to pieces and studded with arrows and slashed by swords.

One pale hand of the soldiers was completely red. Soaked with glistening dark blood where he’s cupping over his wound.

Draegan could smell it as he moved closer through the trees. The tang of it. The long silver sword in his hand leaving a slick trail of blood behind him on the ground.

Kylo looked up when Draegan’s foot crunches over a broken arrow. Weaving amongst the dead soldiers. Shapes strewn and splayed across the snow. Sticky viscera exposed from wounds. Blood pooling warm under his feet. The snow was crimson hot.

Draegan caught his eyes for the first time. Such wide innocence and pain sheening glossy in this man’s honey-brown eyes. So soft in a face full up of such hard hatred and pain.

Such sweetly slow death surrounds this young soldier.

His teeth were grit. Long shoulder length hair all shaggy, piecey and dirty and braids and chunks of it falling over his sweat sheened face. Cream cheeks glimmering in the meagre moonlight. The exertion from war.

Over all this spilled blood soaking the ground, under the eye of this red killing moon, Draegan has found his love at last.

Kylo snarled and lunged up at Draegan. Swung his sword too wide with a shaking arm. Draegan knocked it easily out his clammy grip with one hit. Sent it sailing out his hand and far away.

Kylo howled in pain. Chuffed a growl through grit teeth. The movement tugged his side. Kylo staggered back as best he was able. Pain shrieked and tore through him.

“You’re in no state to fight me. And I will not raise my sword to a dying man.” Draegan tells him.

Kylo had thought Draegan wanted to kill him. Finish him off like a stray dog with a lame paw. He couldn’t escape. He sinks down defeated. Clutching for what was near. Avoiding stiff corpses. Bloodied snow clings to Kylo’s legs. Shimmers wetly dark on his clothes.

He moved away. Crawling until his back pressed solidly against a tree trunk. Blood wet spilling down now on the rough bark as he leant there for support. His legs could no longer sustain him.

Draegan let his sword clatter into the snow. He shook his head and dropped to his knees before the Viking. Tenderly showing him his hands were empty. Holding them aloft. Slender, kind hands- Killers hands.

It didn’t help his ornate and strong silver armour was spattered in blood of the men Kylo had known and laughed and lived with. That the massacred dead of his friends lay scattered around in brutally severed bits because of this ruthless army commander.

He looked like an angel to Kylo. Pale and sinful and as beautiful as he’s heard Valhalla to be.

Draegan took to his knees in the snow and cupped the soldiers face. “Ssssh. Sssh now. My fierce one.”

“It’s you isn’t it?” Kylo asks. Voice pinching in pain. “ _It’s you.”_ He cries.

The one who he’s heard and dreamt of all his life. Who’s voice whispered and tumbled and carried to him on the cruel north wind. The one whose face he thought he was mad to be seeing; he’s seen the handsome angel of death all his life. And now he’s here- come to claim him. _  
_

Draegan nods. “Yes.” He swallows something sticking in his throat. A lodged grey pebble. Millennia has led them both to this moment. Souls stitching together.

He looked down and peeled Kylo’s hand away from being clamped to his side. He hissed and shuddered in pain. Draegans eyes filled with silver tears to see the huge gash marred in his perfect skin. He looked upon that wound with anger and pain reflected in his eyes and in the vacant pit of his heart.

He wasn’t designed to have a heart after all. Rather, he was designed in mind with a lack of one- torn out of him.

“You know you won’t survive this.” Draegan looks up to the soldiers face. He winces. Eyes screwing up as tears come.

“I know.” He swallowed. Lip trembling. Spit barely shining on his dry lips. Blood and mud crusted and spattered across his handsome face. Terror mingled pain quakes his chest. Makes the hurt, hurt him harder.

He thinks about home. His family. His brothers. His mother and father. He thinks about them and he wants to sob their names into the snow. He wants to hide behind his mother like a child again and let death come for someone else. He wants more time. He wants life.

Wants to taste rain again. And a stubborn girls sweet kiss. And he aches to see his old grey gelding once more. Wants to walk up the brown ribboning road to home. Feet crunching on the snow and the gravel. Hear his brothers play fighting. Pines for the sound of his grandmother churning goat milk to make butter. The butter she fries with smoked fish caught fresh in the market.

He wants to see the acrid puffing smoke from his longhouse chimney. Hear his mothers call of his name drift across the pine scented forest like a serpent on the air.

Now his soldier is shaking and clammy and breathing so fast. Panic bleeds out him and makes death loom nearer. Sooner.

“I won’t let you die. I can help you.” Draegan promises. Eyes starting to cloud silver-gossamer white. They had been blue as a spring lake a moment ago. He brushes hair back off his soldiers neck. It’s damp raven black. Dark as onyx.

Kylo had summoned the barest scrap of energy to scoff. Swallowing again. His tongue as dry as old dirty bones.

“Will it hurt?” Kylo asks. Chest bobbing with his gasps. Furious beat of his heart is a war drum.

Draegan doesn’t know. He can’t give his dying love comfort. “I don’t know.”

Kylo looks at him for a long second. “I think I’m scared.” He stammers. Lip wobbling. Tears and salt flood wet on his cheeks.

“I’m right here, fierce one. And I’m not leaving you. I’ll bring you back.” He kisses to his pale sweating cheek in a promise. Moaning at the taste of his love. Tasting blood and claggy mud. Dirt gritted in his teeth. Kylo groans. The erotic sound is so wrong but it feels good.

His breath comes fast. Draegan lets his face slide to the crook of Kylo’s neck. He takes a lungful of Kylo’s sweat and body. His scent.

Old used soap - animal fat and ash and leather of his armour. Green pine from the trees and the snowy hills near his home. Spice of sweat and woodsmoke merges as one. He can taste the bone deep love he had for his parents. The protection, devotion and care he took after his impish brothers- the yearning to be more of a man in his future.

All of it; his small honest life written into the flowing crimson river of his blood. All life is in the blood.

Draegan let Kylo feel the fangs on his neck. His perfectly dying love.

He shifts in panic only a little, whimpering, before those fangs scrape, tease, and then they pierce-

The glistening wet red of his soldiers blood flows free. Kylo was thrown into hell and Draegan plucked him right back out. Brought him back for that life he so desperately wished to live.

He recounts the tale of their meeting to Iris. She’s enthralled.

By the time Draegan finished explaining it to her, he can see the wet shimmering in those gorgeous moonstone eyes.

She felt everything that Draegan had felt. Coming across the man he loved as he lay dying. Kylo had told her about the instance of their meeting- but Draegan was a natural born storyteller. She could sense the hurt in his words. All these years later and it’s as fresh as if it happened only a week ago for him.

Iris reaches over and takes his hand. Before she can think how forwards and inappropriate that is.

“I’m so sorry.” She says as she skids a hand across her cheek to take away a stray tear. “I know you loved him very much. It must’ve been agony to see him like that.”

She feels the pain of their meeting so deeply. Sweet little spark.

He smiles. Holds her hand back soothingly. “You’re right. It did hurt. But loving each other eased the pain. As love so often does. It is a great healer.” Draegan tells.

Iris nods. She knows- she’s suffered the exact same pain. Leaving her life and abandoning everything she’d ever known to enter into a new existence. She hasn’t shared in battles or bloodshed or war. It isn’t comparable. But there is a faint similarity. It’s as if he can tell what she’s thinking. He responds;

“You were brave in loving him too.” He adds. She slides her hand off his. Embarrassed, judging by the soft tint of pink that sat on her cheeks.

Iris hardly knows what to say to his words. She lowers her eyes to her lap. “Bravery felt an awful lot like cowardice. Sneaking away in the night.” She tells. She’d never let out that thought to Kylo.

She didn’t think about home all that often. She did sometimes wonder about what was said and done in her absence. After it was discovered she’d eloped with Kylo. She thought about the nasty words that would have been thrown around by unfavourable mouths. Harlot. Whore. Jezebel.

“I didn’t have to think about what I was abandoning. I only thought about why and what I was leaving England for.” Iris insisted.

“Iris it was different circumstances that led you two together. But just because it didn’t involve bloodshed or war doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. You left one home for another. That’s a difficult parting to undertake.” He explains. Frowning deeply at the sheer emotion he put into his words.

Iris is so touched by how devotedly he feels the words he speaks. He really was so conscientious and emotive. Kylo hadn’t taken the time to describe him in that way. He’d only described this devils raw and terrifying power.

She nods. “And I bet you’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if you had too?” He asks. Catching her eyes. Leaning down and meeting her gaze.

“Absolutely I would.” She is happy to tell. Draegan can see the pure honesty in her smile. Her love for Kylo lives in that smile.

He’s smiling so to her upon seeing that. He loves how she loves Kylo. It’s what he deserved. Even as an outsider to their marriage he could plainly see the affection they held for each other. He tried not to let it show to them both how lonely it made him feel.

Iris is glad Draegan loved Kylo. She’s so glad and thankful. If he never had, then maybe none of them would be here today.

She would be trapped into a suffocating marriage in England. She’d be Mrs miserable Sergeant Hux, nothing and no use to her at all but mothering a string of titian haired heirs as her future.

Kylo wouldn’t even have lived to see this age dawn. He’d be a pile of scattered bones lost under the snow in some battle fought and lost long ago. A dead young soldier.

She doesn’t know what or where Draegan would be- the mystery of him still prevails.

She turns and watches out the window. The forest still blurs them by as they move through it in the speeding carriage. Iris remarked how strange it was that after they left Ranlor’s grounds, the snow seemed to resume its crushing thickness around the landscape. Settling as cold and as dominating as ever. The sun seemed colder out here. She finds it most strange.

The coach sails them fast through the roads and to their intended destination. Before too much longer, they turn off the main road and onto a quaint track through the woods. Then clacking slowly through a little cobblestoned town, they soon come to another woodland, which soon leads to a very handsome gateway and a long ribboning gravel drive. Flanked by a imperious iron baroque swirled gate and twin creamy stone columns etched with the fluer de lis.

The carriage swings through the small gates and treks slowly through a browned-frosted birch wood. Iris peers out the window. Leaning far over her side. Breath fogging the cold glass.

Draegan turns and slyly watches her gaze out the window enraptured by the sight of the Château ahead. He watches the earrings she wore today sway over her jawbone. Sapphires and pearl drops. He turns back before she can even catch him staring at her beauty.

She smiles as the handsome house comes into view. One look at Céline and she knew a woman as fashionable and as chic as her would live in such a beautiful home. And this Château is exactly that.

Château Chaumont stands proudly out the surroundings of an impossibly neat and manicured green garden. Cleared out of the woodland surrounding it. The house itself is a biscuit-cream stone and the slates on the roof are rounded petticoat tiles of cloud grey. It’s no more than three floors with large rounded arches of white windows on each floor and tiny dormer windows in the attic.

The gardens are fabulously French in design and very well maintained. Sculpted box hedges and low mazes and renaissance ornamental shaped beds. Swirled with fantastic neat patterns. Brimming with tulips and roses in the summer. The drive up to the house is just as magnificent. It’s flanked by long thin navy ponds on either side of the pea shingle frosted road. Also in the summer Iris could see a family of swans gliding on that sapphire-black body of water.

The coach pulls flush to the swirling concrete banister of the entrance steps that drops down from the terrace patio of the front door. A pair of liveried footmen draped in cream and gold piped uniform - with fantastically bright rose pink powdered wigs tied with purple ribbons - are already out the door. Striding fast to the carriage to help the occupants out.

Iris smiles as the footman opens the door for her. Bows and takes her hand. She smiles seeing that even his gloves are pink. She spies Célines hand in that decision.

She smiles her thanks and hops down from the coach. She gives the footman her calling card and announces herself, Lady Ren and Lord Verros. Calling to take tea with the Comtesse.

He nods and bids them to follow him up the steps after him. Draegan rounds the carriage and takes Iris’s hand to help her up the steps as she holds her skirts and coat out the way. Shoes crunching on the frosty icy steps as they ascend. She still blushes at his touch. Every inch a gentleman just like Kylo is. They hold open doors and act perfectly civilised around her. She likes to see it.

They are lead through a warm foyer. It’s like stepping inside a perfectly immaculate dolls house. Girlish style in feminine colours bloom on every wall.

It’s every inch a deeply rich and ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration. This house combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colors, sculpted molding, and trompe l'oeil frescoes. Creating surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. Dramatically beautiful. Iris expected nothing less.

The air is all roses and petals from the flowers bunched in huge bushes on vases on every surface. Popping bright petals of red and pinks and romantic oranges. Tulips and roses and lilies. Bursting nectar sweet and green into the air.

The foyer is gold and butter yellow. The trim on the walls and the curtains is a chirpy and cheering daffodil yellow. The draperies are wheat with gold trim. The floor is pointed white and beige tiles. Spotless and gleaming. Antique baroque chairs in peach and pink perch delicately against some of the walls. Settees with rose printed fabric and bolster cushions. This is a house stuffed with dainty furniture and decoration. Dripping chandeliers and silks and crystals. Rife with wealth.

Another obedient servant takes their coats at the door. Whisks them away silently. Iris is gawping upwards at the majesty of the great staircase. Black baroque iron banisters in contrast to the cream marble steps. A painted ceiling of bluebirds and a idyllic woodland.

She’s open mouthed and staring upwards. Smiling at the beauty. Draegan smirks and touches her arm to draw her back down to earth. She blushes, feeling foolish and hooking her arm to his waiting one. Satin rubs cool on her dress. They almost match. Dressed in similar tones of blue. Robin egg blue of her dress trimmed with white lace and his coat a heavy ink sapphire brocade.

They step through another set of open French doors and the decor changed yet again. Now it’s an icy pastel blue. The same colour as Draegans pallid eyes, Iris remarks stupidly to herself. She shakes the thought away. Admires the painted bluebells on the scrolls and baroque gild on the walls.

Here too is no less ornately decorated. Fancy furniture and walnut end tables crammed with flowers. The other room was butter and wheat and dandelions. Here it is sapphire and sea and sky. They follow after the obliging servant who leads them to what was undoubtedly a parlour in favourable use. Iris can hear giggles and laughter as they come closer. Clink of champagne glasses. A sound Iris already associated heavily with Céline.

The footman pauses at a pair of doors. White painted with blue scrolls trimmed around it. His pink gloved hands take the handles and open both doors for the guests. Announcing them as they step through in French to his mistress.

A whole explosion of colour and life meets them at the doors. This room is draped in cherry red and pink. Red rose patterned draperies folded over the terrace door windows. Even the chandeliers are pink crystal glass. The settee and chairs are strawberry red. The whole room is as fancy and as gilded as one of Carême’s sugar spun pièce montées. Designed to look appealing and every inch a work of art. A feast for the senses and the eyes.

Sweetheart tea roses flank every flat surface in glass vases. Squat sickly pink blooms. A lit fire in the half making the rosy air pleasant and warm. Gaggled in the centre, the parquet oak floor hidden by a thick creamy rose patterned rug, sits a whole cluster of ladies swarmed around a table brimming with teapots and saucers and cups and fancy French cream cakes.

Iris can see plenty of champagne bottles open and flutes of sparkling pink wine studded with rose petals and raspberries. She can see towering cream cakes and dishes of sweets. Little round bright cakes of meringues studded with dried flowers. And then the famous macarons. Violet, pink, green and yellow. Every colour imaginable. Bowls of confection dotted all around. Chocolate and pastries and dusted squares of rose water Turkish delight. Decadence at its finest.

Iris can taste the richness and the sugar in the air already. She feels like she’s sitting to tea and champagne with Marie Antoinette herself.

The yellow silk figure on one settee turns her head and smiles and stands with great excitement upon seeing her guests and hearing them announced.

She places the last of a pea green macaron on her tongue and enthusiastically rises and crosses to her guests. Still with a glass of champagne to hand as she floats across to them. It sloshes and roils as she flits across to her friends.

Even when at home, Iris sees Céline is no less composed. Today her dress is a lemon yellow silk. Contrasting to the furious mulberry purple of her brushed wig. One curl folded demurely over her shoulder. Resting against the beautiful dark complexion of her shoulder. Breasts clasped high under the bodice of her chest. Wheat gold trims in ruffles all around her neckline and on the large engageantes hanging down her elbows with frothy white lace and wheat silk bows. A bright kiss of red on her lips and the very same lightly dusted and barely showing across her cheeks again.

Iris truly believed Céline didn’t need any of that rouge. She would still be far too ruthlessly beautiful without it.

A cloud of French perfume, roses and wild violets, smacks Iris in the nose as Céline attacks her with kisses. One on each cheek leaving a imprint of rouge behind. Iris can smell the chalky rose powder of the blush she used.

She holds Céline’s hand back and feels far too unimportant to deserve such a warm smile and hearty welcome. Her friends arm rattled with pearls and diamond clasped bracelets studded with big purple stones. Her necklace is the same. A stout purple gem, many of them, sit around her neck.

“I have been longing to see you both, my darlings.” She fusses. Holding Iris’s hand as she leaned over to kiss Draegan. He smiles and leaned into her embrace. Accepts her kisses on each cheek.

“I did miss you. You handsome devil.” She purrs at him saucily. Lips pursed into a salacious grin.

Draegan’s fond smile is a thing of pure beauty. His eyes glitter as he looks down at Céline. Iris could see the love and the ancient nature of their connection as friends and lovers.

“I missed you most dearly, Céline.” He states warmly. She grins and grabs both their hands. Tugs them along and further into the room. To join the other ladies on the settees.

Iris can tell from the look of them that these are fellow demimondaines. Dressed in robes just as decadent as Céline’s. There’s two dark haired very pretty girls, and one with long blonde hair. All of them Ladies. French nobility. Daughters of brand houses. They wear pastel colours, blue and pink and peach. Frothy trimmed dresses abundant with lace and flowers pinned in their coiffured hair. And they each wore little silk ribbons tied into bows on their necks. Their cheeks glow with rouge and they all call a loud ‘ _bonjour_ ’ across to the newcomers. Scoffing dainty little cakes and sipping champagne or tea.

Céline’s very cunning. She takes one look at her friends and steers Iris and Draegan on the small settee - the love seat. Pushes them together. She takes up an armchair next to Iris. Clasps her hands and introduced them both to her friends - the honey blonde was Madeline, the brunettes who were sisters, were Elodie and Belle.

The sisters were fresh from Paris just this week gone. Belle was a poor mademoiselle. Suffering such complications. A broken heart after a man she loved. Elodie and Madeline had in mind to cheer her up. Finding her a handsome beau in Bavaria.

She certainly perked up seeing Draegan. They all did. The brunette shuffled across the settee and laid her hand over his in greeting. He took it and kissed it. Mumbling to her in gentle French as she giggled and blushed. Purring the language at him as she poured him some champagne.

Céline turned to Iris as the girls squealed and faffed over Draegan like a bunch of flustered hens. Something ugly tugged at Iris’s stomach.

“They’re darling girls. But really they’d flirt with anything sporting breeches.” Céline whispers to Iris in polite ribbing as she pours her a glass of champagne.

The tangy pink froth pouring into the tall flute. Swirling with raspberry fruit and rose petals. She pours too much and it fizzes over Iris’s hand. She licks up the fruity spill of it.

Céline watches her friend very closely. She sets her eyes on Draegan as her friends flirt up a storm - so taken with and so they always are.

She then looks back to Iris who looked at the way Madeleines hand rested on his thigh. She tilts her head. Looking at the pair of them. Judging, discerning-

Céline shoves a dainty China plate in Iris’s hand. Brimming with cakes and fancies. “Here, eat Mon Chou.” She encourages. A clever distraction.

Iris gladly obeys. Daintily biting into a strawberry tart. Glazed fruit and crumbly buttery pasty and sweet vanilla custard delicious and ripe on her tongue. She chews and swallows before she speaks. Takes another bite.

“Céline I must say, your Château is so beautiful.”

Céline grins and looks around her parlour. Her home. “My late husband, hateful as he was, he had good architects to build this house.” She smiles. Sipping back her fizz. Leaning forwards, her breasts nearly tumbling out the neckline of her dress as she reaches for a dusty square of Turkish delight.

She hums in delight as she offers Iris a square. She declines. Céline decadently licks the icing sugar off her fingers.

“Anyway. I do so hate talking about that man. Let’s talk about you mon ami.” Céline asks. Wafting a hand to Iris. “Hows that husband of yours? How have you been since that awful incident at the ball?” She asks.

“We’re very well.” Iris smiles. Warm blush on her cheeks when she recalls how her and Kylo have been of late - ravenous seems to be an appropriate term for their recent behaviour.

“So I see.” Céline says with a cunning grin. Placing her fingers lightly under Iris’s chin and tilting her head to the side so she could better see the bruises marking her neck - the morsure d’amour marks on her neck. _Love bites._

Draegan peers across seeing Céline and Iris sat in close company. Laughing and giggling over the marks Kylo made on her neck.

He swallows down the fissure of need that swam up in his stomach seeing Iris turn her head. Exposing the arch of her jawbone and her jugular. Right across at him. Her pale veins and her swan neck.

Iris nearly chokes on her champagne. Blushing bright red.

“Don’t be embarrassed. Mon Chou. Vampires make excellent lovers, you know. Most durable lovers.” She winks. Iris feels the bubbles zip to her head as she sips her drink. She laughs with her friend. Céline then leans in even closer and whispers secretly to Iris.

“However. Nothing compared to a certain demon like Draegan. I’m talking hours upon hours of pleasure. He’s a delicious tease. Mon ami.” She coos in Iris’s ear.

She feels suddenly faint.

“You are a terrible influence, Céline.” Iris states nicely.

Céline wrinkles her nose and grins. She rather likes being a wicked influence.

“See? This is why I told you not to bring your husband. We can’t talk about him or scandalous things when he’s here. We can talk about him so freely because he isn’t.” She chuckles.

“Now. I want to hear everything about your meeting. Your wedding. All of it. Tell me all.” Céline asks. She knows she would’ve asked Kylo at the ball all about him and his new wife. But for all her husbands fine qualities, Iris knows he was no great orator.

Iris starts at the beginning. Drinks her pink champagne and tells Céline all about how they met. How they danced and kissed, and fell in love. Eloped to Scotland and the rest was ancient history.

Céline wasn’t the only one listening. A cunning pair of topaz eyes gaze in her direction as she tells the story. By the end of the story, Elodie has wedged herself on the end of the chaise in-between Iris and Draegan. Enraptured to hear more.

Iris didn’t realise hers and Kylo’s love story was quite so fascinating. The girls in the room are enraptured. Draegan is equally as so.

He sits there with his long legs crossed - one over the other. Empty glass of champagne slanted against his thigh. Thumb resting under his chin. Fingers and rings curled up against his smiling mouth.

He doesn’t take his eyes off her. Enchanted by her story. Of course he knows the tale. But he adores hearing her smile and seeing her explain it.

Madeline squeezes Iris’s hand where it now sits in her lap. Joined together. The two girls opposite look just as intrigued. Leaning in. Eating their cakes and cream fancies and macarons as Iris tells the story. Omitting some certain details for fear of scaring the French mademoiselles.

They sigh in enormous romantic feeling when she finishes her story. “That is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” Elodie gasps. Hand clutches over her heart. Over the the petite swell of her bosoms that spilled out her bodice and stays.

“That is a truly remarkable love story.” Madeline smiles.

“Kylo was so right to snatch you away, from that hideous mother and suitor of yours, mon amour.” Céline grins. Pouring Iris more champagne. By this point and at the rate she’s guzzling back very fine Louis Roederer she’s certain her legs are going to wobble tipsily when she stands. If she can stand.

“I wish someone would love me that deeply.” Belle piped up. Wiping tears out the corner of her eyes she was so moved. Thinking of her lost love. She’d left her heart behind in sweet Paris.

“I’m still getting used to being loved that deeply.” Iris says. Blushing. Champagne kissing a heady pink at her cheeks. Bubbling up in her chest.

“It’s wonderful.” Céline catches Iris’s eye and winks.

“Iris my love. I do believe it’s looking sunny outside... would you favour me with a walk?” She then adds. “I can show you my excellent gardens that I overpay my gardener way too much for. Lazy brute.” She giggles. She daintily reaches over for a little gold bell on her side table and rings it to summon the footmen.

“I’d love too.” Iris answers. She’ll never pass up on an opportunity to see a well-kept garden.

“Perfect. Let me just go and fetch my hat. I’ll have your coats brought in. Draegan, darling. Why don’t you show Iris the way and I’ll catch you up.” Céline grins. The rest of the ladies giggle.

Draegan smiles. “Coy doesn’t become you.” He warns with a smirk.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” The Comtesse winks as she pulls up her ladies by the hand and marches them away to muster their coats and hats. The doors open in perfect timing and two footman stride in and open the double parlour doors. Flanking the sides like tall imposing furniture. The ladies dresses sway as they walk out. Feather decorations fluttering in their hair.

When Iris stands the champagne boils in her blood.

Her legs feel wobbly and her head feels like it’s lost in the fluffy pink clouds and cherubs painted on the parlour ceiling. Woozy and her heads full of petals and pink raspberries and giddy silly bubbling wine.

A sapphire silk coated arm sweeps through hers. Rights her upwards. Presses her beside a firm satin wrapped body. Now they were quite alone, he speaks.

“Thank heaven. I thought she would press the sweet blonde girl on me again. As lovely as she is-“ Draegan trails off as he escorts Iris out of the parlour and out of the double doors another pair of footman open. White doors spilling open onto the sunny terrace.

“Oh?” Iris asked. “I thought you seemed quite taken with her.” Iris states. “She seemed very sweet and you were most engrossed in conversation-“

Draegans kindly chuckle makes her words die in her throat. Turned to ash.

“She’s a very dear girl. But that is where my opinion and interest regarding her ends.”

Iris almost choked with relief. And then she berated herself. She can feel her body making moony eyes at this man. Stealing furtive glances and watching for his smile. And she had a husband at home. A ravenous husband who she loved more than air. A wedding band on her hand. Why was she acting so skittish and hot? Breathless like a stupid girl flirting around their sweetheart.

“She seemed very fond.” Iris supposed. Pulling on her gloves.

“You thought I reciprocated that fondness?” Draegan asked Iris openly.

Honest blue eyes of his gazing unyielding and yet softly at her face. Made her neck flush hot. Now she’d been caught out in her stupidity.

“I-“ iris gasped for the right words. Groped for her truth.

“I’ve no right to have an opinion on who you do or do not associate with, or like. _God_. And I feel ridiculously foolish for even saying these words.” Iris laughs nervously. Blood flooding in her cheeks. She moves to step outside. Chiding herself.

Draegan catches her elbow. Turns her gently to face him. “I admire your curious nature, Iris.”

“Then that’s singular. I most certainly don’t. My mouth gets me into such trouble where my brain seldom has the temerity to follow it.” She admits.

She dares to look back up at him. He chuckles. Then he clarifies something for her.

“I don’t have any sort of attachment toward her. But I must admit, there is someone, of whom I admire very much.” He explains.

His eyes don’t leave her. He mourns the tragic little instances when he has to take his eyes away from her.

Iris’s mouth gapes open a little. She feels such weight in his words she hardly knows what to say. She smiles and takes his arm. Flattered by his compliment. They take to the terrace and down the steps.

The sun seemed to be bright here too. It was starting to warm up the frosty gardens. Mist lays cunning and white on the grass. Amber sun speckled through the greenery on the trees everywhere. It looks a beautiful garden. Emerald green dashed shades of honey and amber in sunlight. Every leaf shivered in the slow afternoon breeze.

He helps her slip on her coat and pulls on his. Even though he didn’t need it. Her stomach tightened when she smelt him fold his hair out the trappings of his coat. A gust of jasmine ebbed across to her. She felt how that essence of him made her swoon.

He offered her his hand again and she took it as they wound down the rose vine covered steps. Around them and down on into the garden. Their shoes crunch in the frosted grass. And their coats drag along it too.

Iris notices how the garden air seemed warm. The sun broke through the clouds and now it shone over the snow and frost. Buttered it up warm. Melting the ice crusted on the grass and the hedges. Their breath spirits silver out their mouths as they walk along arm in arm.

“It’s nice when it’s not snowing. Such a shame. I’d love to see the gardens in the summer. The lake in the sunshine would be so handsome.” Iris supposed.

Draegan hums thoughtfully. “Yes it would. Such a pity.” He comments.

Iris didn’t see how the grass was already thawing in their wake. How the roses perked up in their hedgerows after they passed them by. Such a merry little coincidence-

“Although I agree snow is quite beautiful in its own right. One can only take so much of it.” He concludes.

Draegan likes how she turns her head to the sun. Drinks in its warmth on her cheeks. Molten gold of it beads along her lashes.

He’d love to bring her to see his Villa back in Sicily. Or even his white marble palace in Greece. He had a whole island to himself. Studded in the blue sea. Whipped by salt curling off the spray of the waves. Tropical gardens warmed by the sun and moistened by the salty ocean. Where the marble steps rose up white out of the sea. As if ascending into the very clouds themselves.

As if he was a pale sun god. Apollo perched on his throne in the heavens. He thought about how much she’d like the exotic beauty of the gardens there. Bursting with flowers she’d never seen. He’d take her and show her every one by name if she asked it of him.

Céline was certainly taking an awful long time pinning on her hat. Iris suddenly halts to a stop. The cold air clearing her fuzzy champagne laden head. A soft “ _oh_ ” left her mouth. She’d completely forgotten.

Draegan stops and sees her as she turns and winces back at the house. “I completely forgot my bonnet. I took it off in the coach. I should go and fetch it if I’m to walk out of doors...” She supposed quietly. Chewing her lower lip nervously. Annoyed with herself that she forgot.

Draegan turned to her and laid a calm hand on her elbow. “Formality of your time does not have to reign here, little spark.” He tells her.

She flushed a little at his nickname. How appropriate it was.

This demon before her had been alive for as long as time itself spanned. And she’s barely begun her life. To him, she is a spark. A flickering glowing ember almost extinguished. Something he always admired and cherished. A fiery spit of life. A dynamite shot of it.

Iris falls back into silence and walks along with him. Glad that he doesn’t adhere strictly to formality and etiquette. It’s rather refreshing.

“Enjoy the warmth of the sun.” He offers to her. His voice melting and beautiful in her ear. She could feel it rumbling through his chest. Kylo had a voice like gravel and whiskey soaked smoke. Rough and lulling deep. Draegan’s was no less so. But he had a silver tongue that dropped honey. It was equally as delicious to listen too. Draegan’s voice was melodic. Like a lyre stringing notes, or the calm crash of waves on a warm golden Grecian beach.

Iris tilts her head up and as he suggested, she surveys the clouds smeared across the stretch of the powder blue sky. It truly was shaping up to be almost like a beautiful spring day.

They come to a beautiful plump rose bush in the end of their path. Iris reaches out and gently cups her glove under the wilting head of a fat rose. Sad and red and drooping in the now dewy beads of frost. It’s a wonder it’s survived. Kept its petals so well.

She leans forwards and sniffed its full scent. “It’s so sad to see something so beautiful withered by a cruel winter.” Iris says with a pinched frown.

Draegan smiles and reaches up and curled his hand under hers.

She looked up at him and when she looked back down. There the scarlet rose sits, fully restored in her hand.

He chuckles mildly at her perplexed expression. She’s aghast at seeing his gentle power.

“Of course, one must be careful of roses. Risking such thorns to appreciate their beauty.” He says solemnly. Words as silky as the petals.

He carefully plucks the flower from its stem. Draws close to her, dizzyingly close and tucks it softly into the coiffure of her hair. She looks up at him. Awed and enchanted as he strokes a stray curl of hair beside her ear where he’d placed the flower.

His head tilts so slightly to the side. His hair twitched in the meagre breeze shuddering across from the trees. Blowing the essence of jasmine cologne across to her. Dancing with salty notes of sage. It’s utterly bewitching. Iris stands there dumbfounded. She reaches up and touched the wrist of the hand that stayed near her face. Lost, swallowed up whole in the paradise of his eyes.

She can feel her cheeks heat and her heart hammers wild in her throat. Her rational brain is slipping with the hold it keeps on its focus. She feels a familiar pulse and wet heat cling between her legs. She’s aroused by him-

Giggles and squeals of their names jolt them out their embrace. Before she can realise. Madeline slips up to them both and coyly wraps her hand around and up Draegan’s arm and asserts herself at his side. Laughing and flirting and asking him to take her on a tour of the tulip garden just up the path.

Iris steps back. Twisting around and putting distance between them. The spellbound stare that they shared now lay shattered and broken on the frosted grass under their feet.

She feels the heat of her cheeks. Blazing pink in the air. She feels how her stomach tied itself into clever hurtful little knots. She feels stupid and angry and afraid. She loved Kylo more than anything in the world- so why was she feeling so gouged when Draegan stepped close.

Iris looks to her shoes. She doesn’t even catch Draegan’s eyes as he walks past her with the petite pastel blonde hooked like a bauble to his arm. She listens to them walk down the gardens. She pins her eyes to Draegan’s velvet coated back as he goes. Watches the icy sway of his hair. Listens to him talking to the girl.

“Mon amour?” Comes a gentle coo from behind her.

Iris whips around, startled at the sound of Céline coming up behind her. Delicate silky heels crunching on the grass. She’d pulled on a lilac purple silk coat. And a wide flat brimmed hat the size of a carriage wheel sat perched on her mulberry-wine hair.

The hat looked like an expensive beaver skin, decorated with a thick scalloped lace and a gold buckle. A mauve ostrich feather arcs back in the air over her shoulder.

She loops her arm through the Comtesse’ offered one. Falls in step with her. “Are you well? You look flushed.” Céline frowns in concern at her dear friend.

“I’m well. Just-“ iris sighs.

Céline’s butterscotch-whisky eyes flickered up the gardens ahead. Hearing Madeline’s giddy laughter. She looks back to Iris. A knowing smile on her lips.

“Draegan.” She states wisely.

Iris’s lack of an answer was what Céline absolutely took as an affirmative.

“It’s what he’s made for my dear. He is designed to enchant and bewitch. That’s the very nature of him.” She begins.

“He is temptation and lust personified. Everything that calls to humans and we, as vampires, are modelled in his image. Designed to allure. But now him, he is the master of that enchantment. And it is so easy to fall prey to it. I can remember how drawn to him I was as a mortal all those years back.” She tells.

“Draegan is _irresistible_.” She makes plain.

Iris adores Céline for her clarifications. But they make her heart swell to mush in her chest. She’s just another foolish girl taken in by him. The long line of girls he’s left desolated in his wake. Spellbound and cast to the wayside. It feels cruel. It’s awful how much it breaks her heart when she didn’t think it was ever in danger from him.

“I have a husband and I’m happy- we’re.” Iris can’t even summon all the right words. She’s too stunned at herself to articulate.

Céline cups her hand. “I know. Mon chou. I know. But there’s no fair reason in it. The devil has his allures. It doesn’t mean you don’t still passionately love your husband.” She explains.

She nods down the garden. “It just means the devil’s will is so much stronger than a woman’s.” She edifies.

Iris settled into silence and walked along with her friend. A thousand feelings churning away inside. Céline walked awhile with Iris, and gossiped, before she declared she fancied another glass of champagne or a cup of the queens tea. A black tea blend made famous by the dearly lamented French Queen. Chinese black tea, rose petals, honey and citrus fruits. Reminiscent of a sun drenched stroll through Versailles’ potagerie gardens.

Iris quite agrees. She needs tea or champagne or both. Anything saccharine to take the sour taste of guilt out her mouth.

She can’t help but look over her shoulder as Céline says how well her tea roses are suddenly coming on. She spied Draegan and the beautiful girl huddled close under the spreading shade of a lilac tree in the Grecian temple gazebo, at the end of the garden path.

She steps closer into his chest. He stands there like a marble pillar and gazed down at her. Made no move as she tilted her head up at him. Her body language yearning for stealing away a kiss. Her hand on his chest-

Iris rips her eyes away. She doesn’t want to see more. She feels ripped up and twisted up with envy inside. Tears catch the corner of her eyes and she swallows down a sticky stone of cold dread in her throat. She latches back onto what the Comtesse was talking about.

The rest of the afternoon is a pink dainty blur. Decadence and stuffing herself full of cream cakes and very sweetly fragranced rose tea, swirled with a teaspoon of melting brown sugar. The day drags on and on, and the gossip and the champagne never ceases. Iris and Draegan eventually come to take their leave.

Madeline begs Draegan to write to her before she has to return to Paris. Takes her leave of him as if he’s going off to war the next morning. Clutches his hand and desperately begs him to keep in touch.

Iris feels herself take a deep breath after Céline bats away the silly girls and kisses both her guests goodbye in her foyer. She sees the pinched space between Iris’s brow and leans in and lingers close to whisper to her after the kiss.

“Don’t fret mon cher. She’ll fall in love with the gardener or the footman tomorrow. He’s safe from anymore maulings.” She smiles cunningly into her friends ear.

Iris hugs her dearly. Trying not to laugh too hard. “Thankyou. I throughly enjoyed our tea today.”

“You are both most welcome anytime. Dinner next week- Bring that husband along to that one. I’ll rustle you up some fabulously fashionable Parisian courtiers. We’ll have a delicious time.” She winks.

“Perhaps I can finally meet your Russian Prince properly?” Iris asks. She’d been remarkably mute on her Ivanov this afternoon.

Céline rolls her eyes. “I sent him packing back to St. Petersburg, cher. He was so dull. I’ve got my eye on a certain Italian wine merchant now. Flavio. Seven feet tall. Dark hair. Brown eyes like walnut. Skin like warm bronze and muscular as all hell-“ she giggles.

“Oh I’m very much looking forwards to him.” She leers. Iris cannot distinguish in which capacity she means having him - it was one of two ways. As a lover. Or as her dinner. With Céline, she could never be sure of which.

Iris blushes. “He sounds charming.” Céline looks awfully proud of herself.

She turns to Draegan. “Look after our gorgeous English Rose. Mon cher.” She says to Draegan as she kisses him.

Iris steps away to get inside the coach. Gives them a moment of privacy. She misses Draegan’s promise kissed onto the Comtesses cheek. “Always.” He vows.

He clambers elegantly in the coach his side. And they lurch away into the afternoon. Bound homeward. Horses hooves crunching and crushing along the gravel road. Sunshine slips off the wooden carriage roof.

She sits opposite this time. Something about space from being pressed to his body gives her clarity.

An odd sort of silence reigns once more. Iris wets her lips. Tries several times nervously to break it. Draegan can sense her unease. He looks out the carriage window. Idly tapping two ring clad fingers on the side of his armrest. The clack of it hits loud and brittle in the dead quiet air as they rustle and bump along the roads back to Ranlor. Home not far on the horizon now.

Her body warms again at his sudden voice. Melting at the warmth lushness of his tone. Her stomach drops and swoops.

“I dread to think on how many pink champagne bottles those ladies will get through.” He remarks quietly.

Iris smiles a little. “I shouldn’t like to even guess.” She chuckles. “Céline pressed glass after glass in my hand.” She turns to him and looks. He looks amused. A curling smirk on his handsome lips.

“A most terrible influence indeed.” He comments.

“She had my head swimming before half past one.” Iris tells. And they’d only arrived at one o’clock.

“You looked awfully contented. Happy.” He tells her.

“Did I?” Iris seeks. Amused by his remarking upon her state. “I suppose I’ve missed having ladies around. To talk too. Lord help me, I was even starting to miss the company of my vexing sisters.” She supposed.

She felt guilty for admitting it. Kylo had given her everything. And she still found herself wanting.

“Your secret is safe with me.” He vows with tender commitment. He could feel the sadness beating off her like rain. He was very attuned to her. His little spark.

She smiles across at him. Liking how theres warmth and a genuine nature to their friendship. He didn’t appear to resent her in any manner. Just calm acceptance of this whole situation. Kylo’s ex lover and all the emotions and past baggage that came with it. Even though she felt all tangled up and twisted with this afternoons feelings simmering in the back of her mind, she can’t deny how much she admires his quiet easy nature.

She still can’t escape noticing how lonely he must feel. Something mournful beats around him. Heavy and weighted like Ophelia sinking in her brook. Tragedy and sadness woven into his eyes and his smile sometimes. And she can’t quite decipher why it sits there on a man so beautiful and alluring. A man who could have his pick of the entire world.

The quiet atmosphere is suddenly shattered. A terrible thump and a crack severs the air. As if the carriage roof opened and a shard of lightning broke in and charred the wood. They hit a large rut in the road. One that sent both passengers in the carriage hurtling.

Iris tumbled into him. Falling forwards onto him. Right where he sits. Virtually landing in his lap. He sits there with his legs slightly open.

He moves as quick and as seamlessly as water. Her hands flailed out to make contact with something to catch her fall. She needn’t have bothered. He’s there. Right in front of her. Solid as a sapphire satin wall.

His arm had slid around her back. He braced her against his front. His leg splayed out side wards to stop her fall. Hand flat to her lower back. Her palms landed on his shoulders.

She thought when she first looked at him how different his musculature was to Kylo’s. He was slender but now she can feel under her hands how his body is most certainly not without power. He’s every bit as hard and as firm as Kylo. Marble paper pale skin, and stone muscles. Bones like hard unbreakable glass under her palms.

His hair is caught under her hands too. She’s got her hand tangled in a great silken drape of it where it lays spilled against his chest like a pour of milk.

The carriage carries on along the road as if nothing had happened. The same can’t be said for its occupants.

Iris dares to look up. Blushing up a storm seeing how close his face is slanted to hers. She’s damn certain she can’t breathe. Her lungs no longer have a function. He’s so close and so dangerously beautiful she feels herself, her insides, shudder with longing. And he’s looking right at her. Right into her. He can see every spec of her good soul. How badly he wants to corrupt it-

He can taste the rose tea and the sweet champagne that spills from her breath. Warm on his lips.

“Draegan.” She sighs. Calls his name.

He can’t help it. His hand pulls her just that waist just that tiniest bit closer to him. Pulling her in just like the lure of his blue eyes did.

Iris’s throat is dry. A channel of rasping sand and broken glass. Lewd visions dance in her head. Fired by her lustful wants.

She can see herself grasping into his smooth long hair, knotting her hands into the precise white vines, and clashing her mouth with his in a sudden desperate kiss. Knelt above him on the bench and tasting the mouth that she’s seen in her dreams for far too long.

She almost sobs in longing when something else flickers in her mind. Her and Draegan joined together in this coach as they are now. Fucking on the red velvet bench. Steaming up the tiny glass windows. Heads thrown back, pleading and cursing to heaven. The mania of lust overtaking them both.

Sharing air and breathless kisses and moans. Clothes hastily tugged aside. His hands holding up her skirts as she sits facing away from him and bounces on his cock. His breeches gives away from his lap. Rumpled under her thighs. Feeling him sink deep inside her clutching heat. Knees clasped outside his as those long pallid fingers wander over her jolting breasts, torn half out her bodice and stays. Cupping her hips. Swirling his clever fingertips over her clit.

Facing her away from him on his lap to ride his cock as he stays seated precisely as he is now. His hips plunging his large self deep into her. Watching how he split and stretched her wide open. His mouth and teeth stabbing bittersweet kisses on her neck.

What draws her back to now, was his fingers running along the corded veins in her neck. Ever so gently brushing her hair aside. The way her scent blooms in the air makes him hard. It makes him hard so fast he’s almost dizzy with it. How fast his blood rushes through him. Snaps into his veins.

The air around them is now heady and muggy hot and stifled with sparking static tension. Shivers run unhindered along her spine. She can see lust in his eyes. Especially when they flicker down and watch her mouth. His chest rising and dipping slowly. Her petite hands almost strung around his neck.

The hairs on the back of her neck are needles. Standing tall and poker straight. Kylo had told her he was the hair that raises on the back of mortals necks. She didn’t think he meant it like this. Never in a million years like this-

Draegan wished he could hold this moment in time forever. Capture it in the palm of his hand. Admire it the way one admired the night sky sprinkled with stars.

She watches, enchanted as his lips open as he intends to say something. His hand slipping further up her back. Heat rises in her blood. She knows in that moment that Céline was utterly wrong - tempting wasn’t even the right word for him.

_Devastating_ \- that was the right word.

“Are you well?” He seeks.

She used her palms to gain leverage and push herself away from him. “I’m alright.” She gasps as she settles down back on her seat. She peers up and there’s a high kiss of pink sat on his cheeks. His eyes look unfathomably dark. Glittering with lust. Focused intently on her.

The coach had hurtled through the woods and now rapped up the cobbles to the stables. She could barely hear a thing. Heart pounding and mushy in her ears like howling wind.

It creaks to a lumbering stop. Bumping over the cobbles and coming back into the stable courtyard. Safely delivering them back home. Iris scrambled for a second for the handle of the door, dazed. She slips out and the wall of her fragrance hits him like a crashing wave.

He moans low in the back of his throat. He could taste all of her in the air. Perfume of her skin. Her neck. Fragrance of her aroused cunt. He could taste her lingering in the air. She was wet for him.

He shuts his eyes and savours the torment of it. Swallows down the heady influence her nearness. Places his hand across his mouth and looks away. Otherwise he’d run after her and grab her. He sinks his teeth into his hand until he tastes the bitter copper of his own blood. Savagely hard and throbbing, aching for her.

Iris walks quickly away across the cobbles. Every sharp hit of her shoes on the stones takes her further and further away from what she saw- what she wanted. Her legs ring with the harsh steps. Jolting her out the reverie of her joining with another man.

She doesn’t look back this time. For she already knows his blue eyes would be glued to her back. Watching his biggest temptation walk away. He sighs even more in longing watching her slip away. Hands burning with need where he touched her.

He was aroused there was no denying- blood pounding his temples. But he also can’t deny how much it hurts to see her flee from him in fear and guilt.

It hurts him too.

~


	29. Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Y’all I am so sorry to leave you starving. Hopefully this quenches some thirst and answers some questions 
> 
> And omg Draegan is so yummy I may die 👀

Kylo noticed the shift in his wife’s mood.

He knew she’d embarked to Château Chaumont for an afternoon of gossip and fancy French frivolity. Tea and champagne and a decadent ladies lunch that wouldn’t have been too out of comfort in the shadows of the palace gardens of Versailles itself.

He knows Céline likes her little luxuries. She likes her lovers and she adored to laugh. She even more likes having lady companions to share those luxuries of hers with.

He watches his wife cross the courtyard of the castle. Striding fast with her head down. Bonnet crushed in her hand. The other palm lay flat on her chest. Pressed to her breastbone. Calming the fury of her quaking heart within. Everything about her seems preoccupied. Dazed. Worried.

He walks along the wall of windows to meet her as she comes up the steps and pushes open the door. Her body was here, but her frantic mind was elsewhere.

He appeased his rumpled state from earlier. Discarding his love-rumpled clothing for something a little more appropriate. A clean new coat and white cravat. A crimson waistcoat the only essence of colour on his otherwise dark frame.

“Iris?” He asks. Stepping out of the hallway and into the foyer near her.

She seems to startle at the sudden nature of his appearance. Halting awkwardly and catching his gaze. She pasted on a false smile. He scrutinised her for a second with a kind face. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes seemed bright. Freshened with something familiar. Cheeks kissed rosy, he’s guessing, with the cold of outdoors. Now she’s stepped out of the mild cold and into the warm clutch of the castle. Her skin flares now with heat.

Those burnt walnut eyes of his are all warm and hunting in his searching for the wrong in her. “Something the matter?” He seeks.

Kylo steps close and brushes his hand across her belly. Over her blue dress. Flattening his palm over her coat. His touch brings a pricking needle of tears to stab into the corner of her eyes.

She takes a deep breath that slips tricky through her lungs. She barely feels it’s filling her chest with air. She feels strangled. Guilt foaming on the back of her tongue.

“Nothing. I’m um- _Well_. Céline, does like her champagne. I think I’ve over-imbibed somewhat.” She explains through a wobbly laugh. Looking up at her husband meekly. Sour grief lurches in her throat.

He smiles fondly. His hand idly reaches up and strokes a curled knuckle back over her rosy hot cheek as she talks. She smiles into the touch. Soothed by it.

“I think I’ll go and lie down for a while.” She dismisses. Holding his hand briefly before side stepping him and heading away. Up the stairs and out his sight.

“I’ll wake you for dinner?” Kylo asks. She gives him another precarious smile as she flits away up the stairs. “Of course.” She calls back as she rounds the landing and quickly disappears out of sight.

He listens to her retreat as she goes. The slap of her slippered footprints on the steps. Her reticence and scurrying away to hide in their bedchamber plays on his mind.

Something didn’t seem right. Didn’t feel it.

What little was left of the day slowly bleeds into night. And when she doesn’t show at dinner. Kylo takes matters into his own hands. He himself carries a tray of dinner for her all the way up the their bedchamber. Shoving open the bedroom door with his hip.

He finds their room glowing half dark and half scarlet from the blaze in the hearth. Walls a mouldy dim red. No candles light his path. But he can see the bed just fine.

She’s sound asleep.

Coat sprawled across the end of the bed. Yanked off shoes heaped in a pile by her bedside. She lays in the middle. Sinking into the quilts. Just as he saw her earlier. Hair still pinned. Stockings still on. Jewellery discarded on the vanity. Dress off. Nightgown on to replace it. Splayed out her body across the wide bed.

He rests the tray down outside the door in their sitting room. Discarded. He turns back into the room and watches her from the doorway. Listens to the calm evenness of her breathing. The soft thump of her heart pressing its pattern into the quilts.

Muffled and slow. It lulls him, that sound.

Too many times to count he has laid head upon her chest and drifted off to sleep drinking in that sound. Arms clutched around his most precious love. Locked together as they sleep. His lips kissing a smirk against the hollow of her throat where that pulse also hums it’s pretty, innocent tune. Smell of blood swirling around the bottom of her throat.

The sanity of his entire world housed in that one sound.

He pads in the room silently. Only his clothes rustle. He sits fireside in an armchair with the glass of wine he brought up for her. Drinks it slowly. Let’s the velvet of it drape decadent across his tongue. Bursting grapes and bouquet of an oaky sweet red wine.

He drinks the entire glass carafe of it as he sits there and listens to her rest. The taste fuzzes up his tongue and loosens the tightly knotted hunch in his shoulders. Perched over his desk for half the morning staring at dusty old land deeds. It soon took its toll. He felt the stresses of his day ebb away like the foaming tide deserting the shore.

He lets the fire warm up his cold dead bones. Let’s his eyes wander the open window where the drapes are cast aside.

The blue forest is nearly entwined as one with the night sky. Sapphire and ink black melting together. He can see the tops of the pine trees blazing with furious wind between their tips. Fussed and swaying in the cool of the night air. A whole infinity of white stars strung up in the sky like pearl studded netting. The trees shiver with the cruelty of the wind that carved between them.

One sound interrupts his solitude and reveries. A cry pierced the crushing veil of night across the horizon.

Now he knows the snow has thawed, bleeding away to water which sustained the earth. Sodden into the cold damp earth. Rich in the soil.

He’s faced with a sudden idea. It makes him smile to think upon it; something he should’ve done weeks ago.

He makes for his wardrobe. Shucking clothes as he goes. Down to the bare minimum. A shirt. Breeches and boots. And he pulls on a vast black overcoat.

Iris comes to with a gently kind hand stroking her cheek. The cold touch she knows and recognised perhaps even better than her own.

Her eyes flutter open. Bleary and sleep smeared, to see her husband sat on the bed by her hip. Gazing over her. Pale skin cast a spun-copper glow in the dwindling firelight. It kisses his hair and his cheeks and makes his eyes look like the colour of a dram of whiskey caught in a crystal cut glass. So fine and so big. So beautiful. It still amazes her to this day how much she’ll never stop adoring him.

Her heart isn’t fixed in love. It swells and transforms a little bigger each day with new ways to love and appreciate him. Every smile feels new. Every touch sends her brain further into the barren plains of insensibility. She loves her husband with every fibre of herself there can and will ever be.

She groans awake under the watchful caress of his tender, dark eyes. His hand stroking hair off her overly warm forehead. Dewy hot from sleep. She curls out her back and rolls over. Peering up at him as she unsticks her tongue. She looks past him to the window to see night had fallen thick. An inescapably dark midnight looms at the window.

“I overslept.” She husks with regret. Voice a raspy echo of its usual self.

Kylo cups her face and draws her into one of his lazy kisses. Slowly moulds his lips to hers and steals all her breath away in one snatch. Makes her soft heart turn to mush. Feels like it spills out the cavity of her breast and slips down over every one of her ribs.

A vampires kiss was the most beautifully potent thing in the world. How evil it is for him to wield this against her so constantly- his kisses are the greatest addiction she’s ever known. Before his lips have even pulled away from her own, he’s speaking. Deep voice pressed rumbling into her lips.

“Come with me. I want to show you something. Get your warm fur cloak on, dove.” He kisses onto her temple.

There’s an odd frenzy of energy surrounding him. Living in secret in the crook of his smile. Iris sits up on her elbows and her eyes adjust to the bedroom he’d darkened. No candles, the fire choked to embers in the half.

He’s up to something.

He stands and fetches the item of clothing for her as she rouses to life and shakes the heavy sleep out her body.

He wraps it around her when he comes back into the room. It sits heavy and draping on her. “I can’t go out in my nightdress, Kylo.” She points out. Stuffing her stockinged feet into her discarded boots. Movements lazy and uncoordinated. She fumbled with the laces and eventually manages to tie them up.

He smirks. “Yes you can. You’re the Lady of Ranlor castle. Come on-“ His smile tips up as he links his big fingers through her own and leads her quickly away across the floor. Out the doors.

Iris lets the walk ebb some more consciousness into her sleepy state. Wakes her up as they wind their careful way through a dark empty castle. Every candle is out. Every staff member safely tucked up in their beds. As they come down the grand stairs Iris dares a look outside and the sky is a chunky soup of swirling smeared white clouds that hide the moon. No wonder he was restless- it would be full again any day soon. Any day now.

She knows how that mania feeds into her big vampires bloodstream every month, without fail. Such feral ferocity becomes him rather well.

He leads her out past the kitchen. Through the silent cold room. Even the stoves are dying down from their earlier warmth. All the cold stone walls grow cold once more. The big dining table cook uses, is wiped down clean.

Moonlight shines in a hazy white glow off its scrubbed wooden surface from the big arched window. The air is ripe with the deadened woody scent of herbs and the roasted meat of dinner that was cooked in here only hours previous. The bread for tomorrow is proving in the stove. Sticky wet yeast and salt. Iris can smell it on the air.

Iris follows after Kylo as he leads her out the kitchen gardens and into the ornamentally shaped low shrubs of the Dutch gardens. All the box hedges and rows of trimmed flowers. Only evergreens flourish under this frost. But she can see that new life is popping and rustling and shifting under the press of the soil. It will bloom soon.

Winter is slowly but surely melting away. She loves to think that she’ll see this castle in the heights of spring. Winter was utterly commanding and beautiful. But she had always been partial to summertime in an overgrown haven of greenery.

He steps up the wide staircase leading to the terrace and the orchard of trees beyond. He’s leading her out to the woods. He unlatched the creaking iron gate on the border of his property, and into the thick dark of the woods he leads her. The trees shade swallowed them up. A sticky blue midnight dark cast in all the tall spreading shadows from the dominant imposing pine trees.

Their boots crunch on the little frost that glimmers like scattered encrusted jewels under their feet. “Where are you taking me?” Iris asks. Holding her coat tight about her chest to keep in the warmth of her body.

“You’ll see.” Is his cunning answer.

“Are you planning to ravish me out here, husband?” She says. Trying not to shudder with the cold. Her teeth are nearly chattering. She came from a warm soft bed and out into this.

His chuckle is dry and throaty. He turns back over his shoulder and takes his time raking his eyes all over her. A salacious look if ever there was one. Doubly so coming from him. A creature of such lust and dark seduction.

“Mmm.” He growls. Stopping and tugging on her hand to pull her right into his chest. Up on her tiptoes to crane her head at him. She thudded into his body so hard her breath deserts her.

“I admit. The idea has its many temptations.” He grins at her. Narrows his eyes.

“For once, tonight, ravishment of my gorgeous sweet wife isn’t my intention.” He promises. Steps back and squeezes his arms around her waist and lifts her right out the air, and down the rocky ground. Down the steps of rocks he’s just climbed over. He sets her down again with a smile and a kiss on the brow.

Both their breath is a silvery wisp on the ink black air when they speak. All she can see of her husband now is a vague definition of his creamy skin against the navy night. The forest only gets thicker and blacker. The sticky white of his eyes that focus on her. And she can see when he smiles. Such black clothing, nearly all of him is lost to shadow.

Kylo chuckles to himself. Lifting his head and taking a deep inhale of the frigid air. Listening. Scenting. Waiting. The stars are out tonight. His hearing is so good he could almost hear them glittering and thinking in their spaces in the heavens. He can feel their majesty struggling to beam down behind the chowdery churn of the white clouds that hide the sunken crescent. As if the moon itself is a pale sailboat lost in a white frothy storm at sea. Eaten up by the hungry waves.

He takes in a lungful of home. Bitter green pine, sap and earthy tang. Of cloying mud and moss and leaves mushed to the forest floor. The cold air that shudders through his dead veins. Iris is looking up at the barest slither of light that the sky offers.

She hears a shifting of fabric, as he moves his arms. She looks back down to earth in time to see a large black shape sailing towards her. She catches it. It’s his coat that he’s shrugged off. Heavy wool laden in her arms. Cologne of him and his skins musty scent pours off the wool.

She looks back to her husband. Perplexed as anything, frown on her brows as he starts removing his boots. Lifting one leg and working off the strict tight leather. Throwing the things into a pile at the base of a frosted brown tree. Hopping as he works on yanking the boot off. Starting on the next when he’s done.

His bare feet sink into the chilly mud and frost and earth. He doesn’t even wince. He’s missed this. Naked nature on his bare skin.

She blinks owlishly at him as he takes the back of his shirts neck and lifts it over his head. Stood now only in his breeches. Slung up over his hips. Silver buttons gleam and glitter in the dark.

He throws his crumpled shirt down on his boots. Rumpling the linen no doubt. He then goes for his trouser falls. Big hands undoing the buttons.

Iris’s mouth gapes and she looks away. Still not quickly enough to miss catching a glance of his bare groin. The wiry patch of hair at the base of his cock and the dormant thing itself laying against his pale creamy thighs.

“Kylo!” She chides in whisper. Cheeks red. Eyes as wide as saucers. She hides her smile in his coat that she clutched up to her arms.

She found herself scanning around the trunks of the trees. Checking no one was watching. She can hear his smile in his chuckle. Another jostle of fabric. And the breeches too are on the floor. Now he stands there as naked and as big and confident as anything.

“Aren’t you worried about-“ her mind splutters for words at his brazenness.

“Being naked out here?” She seeks. Being stark naked in their bed was one thing. It’s quite another being out here for all the world to see-

There’s a mushing crunch as his footfalls come closer to her. “Iris. I’m the most dangerous creature in and about these woods. In this whole country as a matter of fact. Of course I’m not worried. My castle. My lands. My forest.” He smirks. Starlight and shade peppered and falling across his chest like his constellation of moles and freckles dotted over his skin.

She turns slightly and catches his look. He stands there, skin glowing creamy in the sparse light. She doesn’t dare avert her gaze past his nipples. She knows she’ll stare. So impressively masculine. So big. Every crude muscle so powerful. So filled with animosity.

“What am I to do with your coat?” She asks. Holding it out. He takes it and throws it behind him without looking.

Advancing on her, backing her into the nearest tree. Lust in his eyes.

“Any decent girl would look away.” Iris tells him. Eyes scanning his chest.

This makes him grin savage. Gathering her up in his arms against the tree. Dwarfing her.

“My Lady can look whereever she wants upon her Lord. Decency de damned.” He growls.

He sweeps her up into an embrace. Holds onto her little waist and sinks them into an indulgent playful kiss. Slipping his wine and frost tasting tongue across her bottom lip. She wanders her cold hands up over his big shoulders. Nestled around his neck as he kisses her even deeper. Moaning into her mouth. Leeching on her warmth for his own. He’s greedy and brazen and he takes her for all she’s worth in that kiss.

They don’t know that high up in the castle. Looming down from one of the turrets, a pale demon was on his bedchamber balcony, enjoying a glass of Rhenish wine in his silken robe.

Blue steel eyes glued to Kylo’s naked back, ass and thighs. The strong bare plains of his last lover that he had so missed. He smirks as he watches Lord and Lady Ren frolicking in their forest. Watches on with longing. Ever the outsider. He smiles mournfully, seeing them so free- so in love.

He smiles. For the first time as many years as he’s been alive since the beginning of time, he ignores the painful stabbing, ten million lances that usually speared in his chest at seeing them both. He doesn’t feel that now. They’re growing closer.

He likes seeing their romance. Hers and Kylo’s. Likes how happy it makes them. How it satisfies them. He drinks and watches and thinks. 

Kylo pulls back from kissing her. Cups her neck and draws himself away.

“What did you want to show me?” She asks gently. Grey eyes glittering sparkling with the moon. Cheeks rosy warm from his kiss. She searches his face for any indication of a clue.

He merely smiles softly. That is the only thing offered. Big hand across her stomach still, he steps around her. Around the tree. And around her side. His hand slides away from her body. She hears him shift across the forest floor. Leaves and twigs crackling under his feet. She steps back from the tree. She can’t see the pale stretch of him anymore.

“Kylo?” She calls out. A hint of panic in her voice. She darts around the tree, her hand soft and gentle on the rough bark. She scans the dark forest. “What trick are you playing now?” She asks under her breath.

She turns back sharply when she hears a noise scuffle across the forest floor directly behind her. Soft padding on the cold hard ground.

She startled a little, body jerking in fear upon first seeing him. But she soothes when she realises it is her Kylo.

A big pair of glowing golden eyes watch her. Stark out the dark forest. She can barely make out the rest of the big black shaggy wolf standing afore her. The thick of his coat glossy and sheening silver with the mere moon.

This great beast form of him she hasn’t seen since she was back in England.

She’d forgotten the sheer immensity of him- in all things Kylo is big. This wolf is no different. His massive head comes up well past her hip. His ears probably finished at her ribs and the confirmation of him is huge and arched. From his withers to his paws it must be the height of her entire leg, doubled.

The wolf steps towards her and nudges under her hand. She rubs the space between his ears and feels the shaped bone of his enormous skull. “This is your clever ploy?” She asks.

The wolf grumbles a chuffing sound as she rubs her creatures head. Low at the back of his throat. A calm low growl.

“Take me to your surprise, then.” She smiles down at him. Rubbing behind his gigantic ear. It swivelled back and forth and listened to the horizon before them.

He walks along, padding slow, deeper into the forest, and wants her to follow him. She does. She does scoop up his coat as they leave. She’d hate to leave it to get ruined on the mucky crushed pine needles carpet of the forest floor.

She holds the skirts of her coat up and steps after him. Slings his great woollen overcoat under her arm.

She navigates around the rocks and tree roots that threatened to trip her. The low branches that snag at her long hair. He waits for her. Leads her carefully into the heart of the woodland. Down rocky slopes. Over babbling brooks. The one that swathes through the land to the West of the castle and carved the rocky landscape up. They pass among thick fern plants and green green wilderness sowed with frost.

They walk in silent companionship together under the concealed eye of the pearly crescent moon. Iris likes the way the night air carved around her face. The pine of it ebbs so strong in her nose. Clear sharp frost. Choking her lungs from the inside out with the severity of the cold air. A scent now so familiar to her it’s the one she associates with home.

As sounds and calls begin to flutter through the trees and reach her ears, she has a firm clue of what his surprise might be. She can hear their howls - calls and barks and cries ascending over the ridged hill ahead.

The wolves pit. She’s heard how some of the local tenants refer to it that way. The forest gathered up into an outcrop of rocks settled at the bottom of a valley. A dried up riverbed studded with jagged rocks. This was the place the wolves had claimed as their own.

Kylo leads her down a slope. Made by a landslide of mud and ferns tumbling down a rocky hill. Twined with thick roots of the pine. He lets her walk along with her fingers slipped into his fur. Holding on. He walks her down the sharp slope carefully.

When they come to the bottom into a clearing, she shrinks close to Kylo’s side. He feels her fingers latch tighter onto the thick fur on his back. She draws his coat in front of her as if it provided some level of protection.

The wolves here aren’t as big as him- but they aren’t far off. Huge creatures. They sit around a cluster of flat rocks digging into the hillside. There must be atleast seven or eight of them. She doesn’t know if more are lurking on the periphery of her vision. She scans around slowly. Not moving too fast or loud, for fear it would earn her some warning growls.

She scans the horizon. There are more. Many more.

Eerie white dots reflect the creatures eyes off the moon - white pinpricks upon the velvet black - padding around the newcomers beyond the shadow of the trees. They’re well hidden. Piercing growls emerge from the cold night. They slowly move. Crowding around so they’re surrounded on all sides.

These feral children of the night. This forest is all theirs. Iris feels ashamed to wander into it so brazenly. So freely. The beast at her side chuffs gently in comfort to her.

It may be the wolves forest, but the land it sits on, and all that surrounds them is all Kylo’s.

Her palms start to sweat onto Kylo’s fur. She’s still gripping her and his coat around herself and she daren’t move her hand. She swallows down a gulp as Kylo walks closer to the pack. These wolves are different to him. Less dark and foreboding - of course they are.

These wolves are grey and ruddy brown. Eurasian wolves. Yellow eyes stand out their rust and steel coloured fur. Their coats are shaggy and thick and white lines their bellies and the insides of their legs.

Many ears and eyes swivel in their direction as Kylo walks her closer to the pack. She doesn’t dare to count how many might be stalking and prowling beyond the tree line. She focuses on the cluster before her. They are bigger than some that linger near the hillside rocks. She’s guessing those are the females. These ones before them, lounging in the open. They are the males of the pack. The protectors.

The males were the big ones she recognised as the ones prowling Kylo’s in territory at the gates. Snuffling at the air at the scent of her. The Lord of the land at last bringing home his mate. Prowling along after the carriage when she first arrived at Ranlor.

Kylo stays stood. Iris crouches down next to him. Sinks into her knees in the frost dusted leaves. Leaves his coat bundled in her lap. Her own coattails be damned. She makes herself look as unthreatening as possible. She knows she’s at no risk. Kylo wouldn’t have her harmed or recklessly cast her in dangers way.

But these are wild animals- there is no etiquette here to be had. So she clings onto the sensibilities of her brain. Look small and submissive and non-threatening.

Three wolves approach slowly. Leaping down off the rock and coming to sniff at the ground surrounding Iris and Kylo. He looks at them, before his head turns back and swivels round to her. Gold eyes brilliant in the dark night.

Their demeanours shift and the nervous tension shatters when their ears pin back. Friendly. Unthreatening. Coming closer to sniff at her knees and her shoulders. Tentatively they investigate this newcomer brought here. Their tails wag a little with greeting behaviour.

Iris softly raises her hand and holds it out. “Hello, you.” She says gently.

They startled back for a moment, but then came in again. Licking and sniffing her hand. She meagrely pets a few noses and heads. Others pad in quickly to see what the fuss is about concerning this new stranger. A new set of scents.

She’s soon buffeted by a plethora of nosy wet snouts and snuffles. In her hair and her ears. Thick fur passing under her palm as she pats them. It makes her chuckle as she’s then drowned in affection.

Kylo sits by her side. Dwarfing her easily. Big tail thumped on the earth and curling around his hind legs. She sets herself up leaning against the sturdy trunk of the nearest tree. Even the juvenile wolves and the females come over eventually. They soon scamper off all excited, to play fight.

The smaller wolves seem wary. Heads and ears pricking up and snatches glances her way. Iris soon understands their reluctance.

Some of them come padding out of a den nestled into the rocks. Yips and barks follow. An outcrop of a bolder and a hidden void under tree roots that they’ve dug away - when she hears the little pattern of tiny thumping paws digging the earth, she knows why the ladies hesitated; they were protecting their pups.

They bring them over. Little rowdy tumbles of puppy like fur blunder into her. Four of the little things. One brazenly climbs into her lap. Tries licking her chin and biting her loose hair. The other two sneak around her back and yip and try and nibble her nice tasting leather shoes.   
  


Growl as they do. Their teeth like a clutch of needles. Sharp. Not worn down yet.

Kylo notices their boisterousness. He lets out a loud chuffing growl. And they stop and tilt their heads before deciding to roll in the frost and play fight instead of chewing on Iris’s boots.

“They’re babies. They were only playing-“ she says softly to Kylo. Stroking one that wriggled for attention still in her lap.

He growls tersely in response. It sounds like annoyance. Especially when the one shes coddling decides to leap over to Kylo and try and bite his tail. The more he moves it. The more it gets bitten. He bares his huge teeth at the pup in warning.

The pup ultimately decided that Iris was nicer. It lollops itself back into her lap and sniffs at her coat sleeves. Licks at the white mink fur her coat is lined with. She laughs it the brazen little animal.

“You were asking for trouble. Not many people can sink their teeth into Lord Ren, you know. Least of all young pups like yourself.” Iris says to the wolf. Turning and catching the golden glare of Kylo’s eyes.

He chuffs. Making a “quite right” huffing, sort of indication. She chuckles at his grumpy lordship. So grouchy even in this wolf form.

She places the pup in her arms down on the ground. He scrambles off to play with his siblings. One of the adolescent female wolves lies sitting beside Iris. She gently runs her hand over their belly. They lean into the touch of her hand when she runs it calmly over their head. Watching her pups play.

All her life she’d just assumed these were bloodthirsty creatures. Wild animals indeed. But she’s glad Kylo sought to show her, to introduce her to the pack. Because here and now she can see they are a family. As tightly packed and as loyal as she imagined a true family to be.

She looks at the wild wolf sat by her side as obediently as the dogs back at the castle.

She turns back to Kylo. Who is now laying down. Draping one big paw over both her ankles. His claws glimmer dully in the meagre offering of moonlight. As long as her fingers and sharp as onyx knives. “I think I’ve made a somewhat good impression.” She tells him.

He ruffs an affirmative response at his wife. An exasperated aura beating off him when the pups lumber over and try nipping at him to get him to come play with them. Even though their entire bodies are the same span as one of his paws. They still irk him. One climbs on his back and tries to chew his ear. Paws splayed over his eyes.

Iris laughs and gently lifts the pup off. “Apparently you’re a glutton for punishment.” She laughs as she tells the little wolf.

She holds the lump of a pup in her lap. Strokes it ears. She looks up and Kylo is watching her. “Thank you for showing me this.”

She knows this is sacred. This is something that maybe no one else has seen.

Kylo blinks slowly at her thanks. She know if he were in his true form. It would have been a smile. That one that curls up one corner of his lips. That smirk she’s so fond of seeing.

As they sit there and watched the wolves play and socialise. Iris feels like part of the pack. If Kylo were his human form. He’d tell her that’s absolutely what she was.

She would be kept in safety by these wolves. They can smell their Lord on her. His scent combined with hers. She’s his mate. She’s their family too. They’ll watch for her in the forest from now on.

The pack protects their own.

Iris ends up leaning against Kylo as she listens to the sounds of play carrying on without them. Welcome interlopers on this landscape.

Iris nestled with her back to the tree and that’s when started to feel drowsy. Kylo stands and moves so he’s curled around her back. She rests her head on his furry flank. Head sloping into the arch of his canine body. Listening to him breathe and his forest companions milling around them.

She runs her fingers through the thick shaggy down of his fur. Warm against her cheek and with his coat pulled over her legs, she’s cocooned in warmth and listening to the howls fade as sleep ebbs in. Mist from the clear day swirls around them. Ebbing in smells of pine and wood and dried frosted mud from the forest floor.

Iris sinks into a deep dreamless sleep. Curled up on her handsome black wolf. Warm fur surrounding her safely. The night passes by quick. Bleeding into day.

Fantastic colours blemished the sky. Before the canopy of gold from the sun fills the distant horizon, before it hangs in the sky to warm up every leaf and tree and root that the cold night withered. Before the light comes, the dark isn’t finished; the blushes and watery shades of dawn streak and spill across the sky like an overturned canvas of sticky oil paints. Copper oranges, cerulean and purple.

Kylo lifts his head from his slumber as birdsong chimes about the woodland. Chirps and calls and fluttery notes of nature singing their chorus to the light. Even as he moved he didn’t wake Iris. She was curled up into his side, fingers nearly latching into his fur. Tethering the beast to her. He didn’t intend for them to stay out all night but alas it had happened. They’d sat and watched the wolves and worn away the night.

He watches over her as gold sparkles suddenly through the trees. Spearing lances of gold sun where shadow had been hours previous. Chipping through the gaps in the tall pine trees. Warming up the soil. Beginning this new day. The wolves are starting to stir too. The pups need a feed and the elder need to hunt.

The little pattern of their paws hitting mud is what wakes her. That, and one of them nibbling once again at her shoe. Tugging her leg. If he could’ve rolled his eyes in this form- he would’ve. She then hears Kylo’s rumbling growl and he’s nudging it away with his snout.

When that didn’t work. He had to lift the pup away from her by biting the scruff of its neck and send it on back to its mother.

She blinks awake, stretched out a crink in her neck and looks up at the sun blazing through the tree branches around them. A green and gold dawn. She sits up and rubs along the back of her neck and Kylo stands, stretched down on his front paws. Before shaking out his shaggy fur.

He gathered the edge of his coat in his mouth and ambled away with it dragging behind him. Iris watches him duck behind a tree. And after a rustle of fabric and some feet padding the crushed pine needles and leaves on the forest floor, a naked and her human Kylo appears around the tree.

Cloaked in only his black greatcoat. His hair was a swirling mess and mud and leaves and needles of pine stuck at odd angles out his tumble of hair. His hands are muddy. His cheeks are smeared with dirt.

Iris smiles so giddy at the sight of him.

Buttoning up his coat as he treads back across to her. Mushing the forest under his big bare feet. Collar gaping down his naked chest and neck. Some of the wolves scarper over to him. Excitedly yapping, gathering around him.

He smirks and kneels and fussed them like he did the big dogs at home. Rubbing their ears with both his big hands as they pinned their ears down and wagged their tails at him. Whining and fussing at him. Scrambling up at his thighs with their claws. One tried to attack from behind. Throwing its paws up his back. Trying to get him down and wrestle. It makes them both laugh. It tries to bite at his big ears.

“Enough. Away with you now lot. I have a Lady to attend too.” He smirks across at her. Kindly pushing and batting them away clearing a path to her, where’s she sat against the tree. Huddled in her thick cloak. Rubbing her hands warm.

He comes over and towers over. Offering out both hands to her. She grabs them and digs her boots in the ground as he hauls her upright. Her sleepy body stumbled onto life. And she’s sure she’s stiff from laying on a cold hard ground. As warm as he was in wolf form with a lovely thick fur coat. She still felt the cold creep into her bones. Aching at her knees and hips.

Kylo tucks her into his chest and makes sure she’s ok. She’s just as rumpled and mussed as he is. Some pine needles stuck into her long hair too. A tiny smear of dirt across her brow. Kylo smiles at her and thumbs it away. Kissing that warm brow of hers that felt a little chilled. Nestling his nose into her muddy hair. Smelling the forest caught in those tresses -pine and the ice and the rich earthy scent that could only belong to Bavarian mud. That and the dog like odour of wolf fur. 

_Home_. She smells like home to him.

He holds his hand around her back and she gladly snuggled into his wide wool chest. They must both look a frightful sight. Draped in pine needles and dirt. But as they stand there and listen to the trees in the wind, the heralding birds chorus in odes to another new dawn, they can’t escape the enormous sense of peace it brings them.

“Let’s go home.” Kylo says. Then he kisses her brow again. Sliding his fingers in the back of her hair and tilting the side of her face up to see him. Cupping her cheek in one hand. He watches the sun rays casting across those sweet cheeks.

“Let’s.” She responds. He joins their hands and walks her away. Climbing up out the wolves pit.

By day, this place didn’t seem half as treacherous as it had seemed last night. They pick their way back through the thick woods. Morning light touched it so differently. Reverently. Turned it into a place of wonder and beauty again. In the night everything had seemed so imposing. Iris finds beauty in both its settings.

They find his discarded bundle of clothes and he properly redressed himself again. As they come closer to Ranlor, Iris wishes she could stop and sketch the way the sun started to crawl up the ivory stone walls. Against the backdrop of the sky, it looked so handsome.

They walked back to the castle through the route they took. Up through the gardens and into the kitchen.

Whereby upon entry, they catch sight of Jomar in his nightgown and a saffron coloured brocade dressing gown tied shut, and golden pointed Persian slippers on his feet. Golden silk dastar, one that looked like the colour of sunshine, neatly wound around his head already- After all, he never truly let his hair down. That said everything about him.

He was busy heating up some coffee for himself before the day truly got started. He’d started a fire in the half and was cooking some toast on a fork over said fire. Talking to the kitchen cat, Clarence who sat purring in the chair opposite.

He did a double take seeing them enter into the kitchen. Cold air and forest swilling about their bodies. Coming in on the air with them.

He straightened up from where he was bent to tend to the fire. And looked them both up and down with one brow raised. His sassiest expression on.

Kylo smirks. Iris tries self consciously to pick the stabbing little pine needles out her hair. “Don’t you dare judge me for this.” Kylo smirks in banter at his Butler.

Jomar looks less than nonplussed. “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.” He offers drearily. “Though I am judging you. Not you, of course Mi’lady-“ he adds. Smiling and nodding his head to Iris.

Kylo rolls his eyes.

“And, my Lord, if you have fleas again. I resign here and now.” He says as he checks on his toast. Prodding it to check it’s done enough.

Iris smiles. “Now there’s an image.” She says as she pats her husbands arm. In her minds eye, Jomar trying to comb fleas out of Kylo’s fur when he’s in wolf form. A most entertaining notion indeed. Their astute Butler probably didn’t care if Kylo took his arm off, as he tangled a comb through knots in his fur and yanked. Anything to not get fleas in the fine rugs.

“I’m sure your steadying eye keeps on top of all things.” Iris says to their Butler.

“Toast?” Jomar smiles at her in offering. She accepts. Goes to get the butter dish and the marmalade. They cluster around the kitchen table and pull up chairs to break their fast with their Butler.

Kylo pours the coffee out the silver jug into teacups - no saucers, they weren’t needed here. The cinnamon honey warmth of the drink made him feel a bit more lively. He hadn’t slept in the forest like that in years. In his vampire youth he rarely had need for a bed. He was born from an age of making campfires and sleeping next to it in his clothes. The cradling lap of nature was his bedroom.

Last night was nice. If different. Maybe he was truly an old and cranky vampire now. But he far preferred a soft bed to a cushion of pine leaves and a mattress of mud.

Jomar fetched another plate from the cold larder. A heavenly spice fills Iris’ nose when he sets it down before them. Triangular shaped little parcels of pastry sit before them. Along with chopped green chillies and some green sauce in a small pot.

“Samosas. My family recipe. Completely wrong to have them at breakfast, I know. But I made a fresh batch yesterday and I’ve been craving them all night.” He explains. Cutting one in half with a dinner knife and handing Iris a slice. She sees the colourful array of diced vegetables within. Peas and diced potatoes, carrots and onions. A curl of curry powder hits her nose too.

Kylo smiles watching them interact over the plate of Indian pastries. Elbow on the table, knuckles folded to rest under his cheek. Watching contented. The coffee steams in their air. Lit by the heavy sunbeam carving in the arched window behind him.

Iris tries Jomar’s delicacy and devours the small delicious thing. Spices and vegetables and crispy pastry. He smiles as he eats his own half. His warm cocoa eyes melting in the sun with pleasure that she likes it.

“They are twice as delicious when they are served hot. But between you and me, if I so much as touch cooks stove. She’d have my guts for her garters.” He explains.

Iris laughs. Of course he was right. Their cook treated her stove like it was her child birthed from her own loins. She was very protective.

“I cannot claim they are the best. My wife’s cooking far surpassed my own. She used to make all the traditional recipes every week. Even made a huge pot for the servants dinner a few times. I do so miss that. I know Ravi does too.” He explains. Gazing sadly at the plate of samosas before him.

“That woman made the best mango chicken curry I’ve ever had.” Kylo piped up. It made Jomar smile. Iris liked seeing them reminisce together as friends. Made a change from the usual sassy bickering.

“The best lamb Karahi too.” Jomar nods to Kylo. He nods back in firm agreement.

“I’m so sad I never got to meet her.” Iris mourns. Sad after not getting to know the brilliant woman who birthed the sweetest boy she’d ever met. And was married to one of the wittiest, most precise, and brilliant men she’s ever known.

“She would have admired you greatly. My Lady. Especially the way you dote after my troublemaking pest.” Jomar smiles.

“The feeling would be very mutual.” Iris tells him. Cupping his hand.

“And now I am positively voracious to try this mango chicken you speak so highly of.” She adds.

She knows Jomar keeps fruit trees pruned in the hot house. Lemon and orange trees. And a row of mango trees that was almost another child to him. He grew them from a seed. Iris often wondered at the plump fat red and green fruit that dangled from its branches.

“With your permission, My lady. I would be delighted to cook it at your earliest convenience. My darling Saanvi left me her family recipe in good faith. I’m sure she wouldn’t like to see it go to waste.” He places his hand over his heart.

She’s glad to hear it. She’d be honoured to try a dish of his home country. The spices and flavours of the east had always appealed to her. She never had much opportunity to take upon it, not in the middle of the Hampshire countryside.

She starts on another Samosa. “Does Ravi appreciate your cooking?”

“He tells me very bluntly how awful it is.” Jomar says dryly. Iris can’t help laughing. Kylo does too.

They clear up their impromptu coffee and samosa breakfast gathering before the kitchen maids or, worse, cook, comes in to catch them. Jomar sees to it they each have baths filled - purely because they’re both so covered in grime it rather makes their Butler fidget and itch to see it.

They separate at their bedroom door with a kiss. And take to their separate baths as morning is beginning to churn to life. Their unusual early start to the day continues onwards. The golden sun they peeked at coming up in the woods. Now it shines blazing proud, and another day at Ranlor begins anew.

Iris smiles all through her bath thinking of her nightly escapade with Kylo and the wolves.

~

Hours later and Kylo is at a loose end. His early start gave him a remarkable jump on his stacks of paperwork. He sags back into his desk chair when he realises he was finished. Throws down his quill and rocks back in his chair for a moment.

He thinks. Broods. Looks out the window at the gardens. Taps his fingers on the edge of his walnut desk in a rapping rhythm.

This was foreign to him. He usually had Jomar bolting the door to keep him in here until his paperwork was done. He once climbed out the window and went to the stables to ride Erland out just to escape a boring load of taxes. Ironic that his Butler had locked him in - not for any horror or blood thirsty temper; but for his punishing him into doing the paperwork that a Lords seat demanded.

He could go have lunch? But he wasn’t hungry. And cook would force him to eat vegetables most like. Banging on about his lack of fibre and greens and a gluttonous overindulgence of meat and protein. He tells her over and over again what he is. She still tries to force him into eating broccoli or carrots every once in a while.

He could go to the library? But he doesn’t feel like a book would suit his restless mood. He’s in no humour to submit to something requiring, brain, industry and patience.

He supposed he could always go and find his wife? Except she probably had affairs of her own in hand by now. Or had likely gone to nap on the settee in her study after sleeping on the forest floor with the animals last night.

He could go for a ride with Erland- if the idiot horse wasn’t currently being goaded into covering a mare and giving him some pedigree little Erland foals.

He does baulk at the idea that his horse is having a damn fine time with a mare whilst he sits idle.

He pushed himself out his chair and sets off to not be bored elsewhere. Who knows? Maybe he’d find a wife? Or a butler? Or a certain young boy in need of entertainment.

His mind pushes a proposal forwards that he could always go and spend time with a certain ex-lover. But he quickly tidied that thought away. Time was he’d consider that tragic. And although his recent defences of Iris have been prudent - he is still erring on the side of mistrust where Draegan is concerned.

He doesn’t know his motives and it worries him still.

He wanders aimlessly through Ranlor. Through hallways and corridors. He finds Brutus and Caligula dozing by the fire in the grand hall. They accompany him on his quest. Padding along behind him.

He does go in search of Iris. But cannot turn hide nor hair of her up anywhere. Not in her study or the book room. Not the kitchen or in his immediate eye-line in his scan of the garden. He hums in idle curiosity. He checks the stables. Erland and Kana are indisposed in the pasture field. And all the other horses are in their stalls. She’s not gone out riding either.

He had just dawdled past the book room. High up overlooking the mountain side, when two voices catch his attention. The sight made him step back and double take. Caligula and Brutus stumble backwards as their master does. Clacking paws on the tiles as they reverse behind him. Kylo stands in the grand doorway and his eyes digest the scene before him.

Draegan. And Ravi.

They are sat at the library table. Hundreds of thick books pooled open all around them. They are haloed in the sunshine pouring in the window behind. Mountains agrees kissing the sunning sky behind them. An image almost too perfect to be true.

Ravi is smiling curious at something Draegan is lulling to him. Explaining cleverly in that soothing voice. More honey and silk than needles. He had once thought that Draegan’s voice was like silk and needles. Deadly but smooth. Here it is only warm. Soft. Caring.

Draegan is leaning forward, sat by the boy. Pointing his finger at a certain spot on the page. The silver hematite ring with a moody grey stone sits on his hand. His usual array of jewels. Today his coat is deep moss green brocade. A golden and amber ring sits on his right hand. A glittering warm chunk of amber sits across his pallid hand. Kylo’s watching as where he leans a sleek section of hair falls further against his chest. Clasping the side of his face. He unknowingly stared a little too hard. The way his white hair flowed like flaxen in the sun. Blinding.

He blinks and announces himself with a sharp rap on the doorframe. Pushing the thing open. “What’s happening in here dare I ask?” He asks lowly. Just a creeping hint of threat in his tone.

“Ravi’s tutor was detained with an affliction. I found him in here going through history books. I offered him my help.” Draegan answers. Pure honest clarity in his shaded ocean eyes.

Kylo thought once upon a time he could read every facet of matter and emotion in those eyes. He’d lapsed in the practice. But he found sincerity in this look.

“We’re learning about the Ancient Egyptians.” Ravi explained. Sitting up in his chair and tucking his feet under his bottom to better lean over the table and see what Draegan was pointing too. An illustration of a sarcophagus lay flat and intricate on the page.

“Are you?” Kylo asks with fascination. He smiles lightly. Pushing open the door. It’s cosy in here the sun warms up the parquet wood floor. The fire crackles soothingly in the half. A gigantic mirror above on the chimney breast throws pools of silver around the room. Dripping with sun and books was this room.

Stepping into the library. Kylo chuckles offhand at the time period they were studying. “Egypt? Your speciality.” He says to Draegan. Stopping at the table opposite the two of them.

Draegan’s eyes find Kylo’s.

“Weren’t you a particular favourite in the court of a certain queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom?” Kylo asks Draegan. Raising his brows.

“Trusted advisor, if you recall.” Draegan smiles back slightly. He could sense the subtle hostility and jealous nature of Kylo’s tone.

“What queen?” Ravi asks. Dumbfounded. Turning another page in the book as Kylo dug accusations at the Demon.

“Cleopatra.” Kylo answers at the same time as Draegan. Ravi smiles at hearing this.

“Was she the one every called the pretty queen, who died by an asp bite?” Ravi’s asking in morbid interest. Scanning through more books. Looking at the squiggled hieroglyphics carved on tomb walls.

“Her death was speculation. Towards the end of her reign she was not well liked.” Draegan says easily.

“ And, on the contrary Ravi. She was not just pretty. She was remarked upon to be one of the most proficient female rulers in all of history.” Draegan outlines. Plucking facts and history from his own memories.

“Foreign and enemy propaganda of her time painted her as a lady who used her looks as a political weapon. But she was sadly renowned for her appearance far more so than her intellect. Which was far greater in my opinion. She spoke up to seven languages and was educated in mathematics, philosophy, oratory, and astronomy.” Draegan explained.

“A very cunning woman. Unapologetic and clever. Blunt. She was a ruthless Queen by all accounts.” Draegan explains. Handing Ravi another book. One on Egyptian warfare and battle techniques. He opens it eagerly.

“You’ll have him ready to be at Oxford by the time the years out.” Kylo says as Ravi sticks his head in his book.

“I believe there’s merit to be found in studying ancient history.” Draegan says.

“Some of it can be pointless to retread.” Kylo’s holds firm. Idly gazing at a book. Turning it in hand to look at the title.

Judging by the terse nature of his words. Kylo was still determined to be frosty towards him.

This makes Draegan sigh slightly to himself as he re-stacks some books on the tabletop. Dust clouds out from the old jackets on the books.

Ravi asks so many thoughtful questions to Draegan in a flood. It’s almost impossible to keep up. But he smiles and calmly kindly answers each one.

Although Kylo doesn’t trust Draegan fully. Not yet. He can’t deny. It’s heartening watching him be so kind to the boy. Kylo felt grumpy with himself for instantly being so cold. Maybe he was thawing up to him a bit.

He reproaches himself. If Iris was here she’d have given him a side eye look that told him he was being unnecessarily cruel when Draegan was only doing a nice thing. A kind deed.

“I didn’t mean to be curt. It was kind of you to step in and offer to teach him.” Kylo’s saying quietly. Shyly flicking his eyes up and finding Draegan’s slight smile.

He nods in respect.

“It’s a pleasure. No one should be deprived of an education. If my history cannot help me. I’m pleased it can help budding young minds.” Draegan says. Turning and smiling across at Ravi. Who waits patiently to be told his next lesson.

“This one next?” Draegan says. Handing him a thin book on the river Nile. “And then you can point for me on the map all the countries that the Nile provides water too.” He smiles with a challenge. Ravi steps up to the task.

As he scribbled furiously in his schoolbooks and the dogs lazed by the fire. Kylo turned to Draegan for a moment.

“Have you seen Iris at all this morning?” He asks the demon.

Draegan blinks thoughtfully. Honestly. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon when we arrived back from Celine’s.” He tells. “She didn’t appear at dinner.”

He tilts his head. Looks concerned. “I trust she’s alright.” He adds.

Kylo’s jaw grits. He fidgets thoughtfully. “I haven’t set eyes on her since this morning.” He says with a veiled look of worry lingering at the back of his eyes.

Draegan’s face turns icy serious, quick.

“She isn’t in the castle and she’s no appointments or outings planned that I know of.” Kylo explains.

Draegan leaves Ravi to his books. He looks as concerned as Kylo does. A clatter at the door interrupts their shared feeling of tumult.

Jomar sweeps in with a tray of tea. Kylo recognises the blend. Pomegranate tea.

One served in an eastern style white China pot with oriental blue flowers. This tea was a gory shade of pink that nearly resembled blood. Glistening seeds of it steeped in the blend. Red nectar of the crushed fruit and dried petals of the flower. Kylo remembers how that dark saccharine used to drip off his tongue and his lips when he kissed him.

He used to kiss him a lot.

Draegan, naturally, had rare taste in his beverages. The finest wines from every continent. Every blend he drinks is rich. Ripe and darkly decadent.

Jomar sets the tray down and leaves a little something for Ravi too. A slice of seed cake and some lemon cordial in a punch glass. Jomar tells Draegan that cook sent him up a tray of delights too. Fruit and squares of cake and scones. This makes the demon smile.

Kylo’s rolling his eyes that he’s swayed even the likes of his harridan of a cook into falling head over heels. He was, after all, irresistible and charming to any mortal. Even his no nonsense cook. Also when he thanks Jomar in his native Hindi tongue. He makes his Butlers eyes grow warm and fond.

“Ah. Excuse me, My Lord. But you mentioned her Ladyship?” Jomar says after he unloads his tray. Tucks the empty round thing under his arm.

“Have you seen her?” Kylo asks quick.

“Not since this morning. But she had a letter. It was addressed from England.” Jomar divulges. Always one for gossip. Raising his brows as he explains this. Letting them infer the conclusion.

Iris had a letter from home. The first letter.

“And my Lord. I must detain you for someone else. Herr Kretsmann is in your study downstairs. I believe he’s got a complaint about some crop yields.” Jomar adds.

Kylo sighs. Not only is he no closer to finding Iris. But now business is yanking him back into the fray. Kylo scratched the back of his neck. Annoyed.

“I come directly.” Is Kylo’s answer to Jomar as he sets off down the hall. He turns back to Draegan before he had to leave.

“Did something happen at Célines? She’s been reserved since then. I wonder if one of her companions made a remark that somehow displeased her.” He seeks. Groping towards an answer.

Draegan knew the real truth as to her reticence.

She’d lusted for him. That moment in the coach where they fell into each other’s arms. He caught her and they shared an earth shattering moment of privacy and attraction. She fled in shame and guilt. He knows what she felt. He knows what she might be feeling now.

She was fleeing away from him. Hiding away. Avoiding Draegan to protect her marriage. She would not let herself lust after another man. Not when she loved Kylo so-

Draegan takes a minute to compose his words. A carefully threaded lie to spare Kylo’s feelings.

“I believe it was an onslaught on her. Feeling the joy she used to feel in being near women of her station again. Céline and her friends. She hasn’t had that since she left her home shores. The loss of her sisters company. And now a letter containing news of them.”

Kylo curses. Relocation dawns on his face. “I hadn’t even considered.” He chided himself and his stupidity.

He plucked her from home and restored her to foreign lands without another thought. He should’ve been more aware of her pain. He’d glossed over it thinking he was handing her riches and marriage and land. And how that should’ve been enough- he made loving her into enough. Of course he did. But something like that still passed him by.

He’s been too pragmatic and heartless. He saw the tears staining salt upon her cheeks when their ship left her homeland.

“Maybe it’s even lingering fear of what happened to that vampire that attacked her at the ball. For which I am entirely responsible. She witnessed unimaginable horror on my part.” Draegan adds. Looking ashamed also.

“I need to find her and talk to her.” Kylo’s sighing in irritation. “I’ll conclude my business as fast as I’m able.” He promises. He nods to Draegan in thanks. Striding out the room with sour crease on his dark brow. Worries for his bride weighting like dense mercury shrouded around his mind.

Draegan thinks a moment after Kylo leaves. Ravi was being a terribly good student and studying his books. He seems completely nonplussed by events unfolding around him.

“You’ve a smart brain in that head of yours.” Draegan says to his student. Ravi looks up at him.

“If you wanted some solitude. Or peace and quiet, around the castle and grounds. Say if you were upset and wanted distance... Whereabouts would you go?” He asks.

Ravi hums at the enquiry. End of his quill brushed over his lips as he thinks. His rusted brown doe eyes, flicker down in thought.

“The woods. Or the lake. Or my tree house at the end of the garden. Or the old stone church near the mountain. The book room. The turrets.” He rattles off an extensive list as he scribbled his lesson notes in his book. Dipping his quill in the inkwell. Furiously concentrated.

Draegan nods. Knowing Iris as he does. He has a small clue of where to look.

“Excellent. Now. Onto Geography. Hand me that atlas, my dear...” He asks the boy. Who eagerly passes it over, opens it as Draegan issues another instruction as per his earlier lesson.

When the schooling is finished. He deposits Ravi in the gardens. They take a walk and talk about plant biology and physics as they stroll along. The boy is a small fascinated fixture by Draegan’s tall side. He leaves him at his tree house safe and wanders off into the woodland.

He’d always found such all consuming peace in a woodland. Ever since his creation. Nature was a balm to him. Always had been and always will. Greenery and plants calmly stimulate the mind. He’s yet to see a garden that doesn’t enchant him.

It does rather make him miss his garden back home. A Mecca of sorts to him. A tropical garden absolutely stuffed with exotic flowers and fruits and interesting fauna. He had two homes where he admired these gardens. One was his villa in Sicily. Where he had travelled to Bavaria from. And the other was his island in Greece. The one he owned entirely to himself.

It rose out of the sea and towered tall. He had many long stretches of private beaches and ocean views to himself. The sand fell like sifted powdered sugar under his feet. And the marble steps carved into the hillside climbed up, up and up, all the way, leading to the huge sprawling white stone palace perched under a fiercely blazing blue sky. Gardens sat around every inch of his property. In the day he could smell the ancient gnarled fruit trees in the walled orchard. Pomegranates, citrus, figs, and pears. At night he could smell the sea entwined with the jasmine on his terrace. The woody and fragrant herbs blooming in the night air of his garden. Rosemary and sage and thyme.

He likes to sit and watch the ever mutable sea as it shifted and altered and the tide slowly ebbed and tugged the waves. He watches the moon skip like a thousand pearls bouncing across the water. Likes feeling the muggy salt breeze wrap around his hair. The call of the nesting nightingales in the trees nearby. Feeling shrouded in the blue of the majestic heavens and the dazzling night sky.

Such simple pleasures he cherished of home. He had a craving to return soon. He couldn’t outstay his welcome. It wouldn’t be polite.

He doesn’t know how much longer he can exist on the offerings of Iris’s mercy. Kylo had thawed to his favour so slightly today. Seeing him teach Ravi. Earned a genuine smile from his fierce one for the first time in centuries. He held that fact close to his dead heart.

He heads through the wilderness of the lake and the gardens kept mildly tended. Admired the way pond lilies grew on the lakes murky glass-bottle green surface. Nature Strangled every inch of this place and he likes that. There’s a temple here. A Grecian style marble summer house. Set into the side of the shore overlooking the lapping lakes surface. He steps up the terrace and peers inside. It is furnished and musty. Shut up for winter. No sign of her still. He continues on. This is where the beaten track ends. Beyond this is where Ranlor’s gardens finish.

He walks now on an uncarved path through the woods. Blending in well to the trees in his green coat and his grey breeches and charcoal calf skin boots. Now he was approaching the huge outcrop that was the mountainside. He looks up at the enormous outcrop of dominant nature. The wind tugs at the ends of his silver hair. Swaying with a mind of its own as he continues in his quest. Hoping his suspicions proved true.

Before long, a murky shape far ahead looms out the treeline. Nestled safe and snug in the middle of nowhere. This is a place beyond being forgotten. He can feel how ancient. How holy. How this derelict land is a testimony to a place long unremembered.

As he comes closer. He can see indeed that this used to be hallowed ground. A ridge along a bank leads to a crumbling, rotting shape of an old chapel. A mark of a civilisation having long since left this deep part of the woods. Maybe it had been a community once. Held together by this church that still stands today. He walks up the ridge and along. Seeing another pond here too. Gathered on a rocky bowl of rocks and a dip in the land where water now collected.

The glass in the windows had vanished. Now just the lancet windows and the engraved stone columns stand. There isn’t much else left. The door had rotted away. Just a U shaped wall remained. And plants grow and vines wrap around every window and moss sneaked out between every brick. He can see wild lupins and hydrangeas swaying against the old cloud grey stone walls.

Something else he can feel. A surge of something mournful ploughs into his chest. He moves closer to the chapel and over the sounds of the pond and the wind ruffling the trees. He can hear something else-

Sobs.

Sadness weights down his brow. His mouth gapes in worry and emotion upon walking past the wall and seeing the huddled shape of Iris sat amongst the wildflowers. In the middle of the chapel on the only standing old stone pew that had been left behind.

His eyes scan along the shape of her. Her back turned to him as she cries. Skidding her hands under her raw eyes to take away the salty sting of her hot tears.

She’s wearing a lavender-lilac coloured dress. A gold latticed broach holding back her intricate hair coiffure. Coils of mud straying down her ivory nape. She stands out so stark from the ivy and moss growing all around her.

A lilac monument of sorrow. Here, inamongst the flowers. Her sadness blooms bright. Slow and sacred like a sticky cold syrup. Mournful.

He can nearly taste the sadness cloying on the bed of her tongue. The lump choking in her throat as tragic sorrow sloshes around her. Like she was sinking in an icy brook. Weighted down by it. Fluid flush of heartache in her blood. Sobs swirl around the hollow of her throat in heart wrenching little noises that make him yearn.

“Iris.” He says calmly. She can hear sadness woven into his voice too. He aches and dies and it’s his desolation from paradise all over again. He’s pulsing with empathy for every tear she’s shed.

He just appeared. As if summoned out the forest by the splash of her tears. An emerald coated nature god. Rings glimmer wealth on his fingers. She spies an amber one. Honey warm and melting orange in the meagre sun. His long strong columns of legs draped in grey breeches and leather boots. His eyes glimmer blue like a wet sea. Deep like an ocean and twice as full of his secrets.

She snaps her head around and bolts up. Turning around to look at him. Under her eyes is a red-pink bruise of raw where she’s been weeping. Her grey eyes shine like doused moonstone. Tears drip down. Staining the front of her dress. She stands and staggers back. Stumbling away at being found in her place of solitude. Sobs and gasps still quaking her chest.

“Forgive me- I.” She croaks. Another sob falls like icy hail out her mouth. Hard and unyielding.

She wipes her eyes with one hand. His clever eyes find she’s clutching a piece of cloth like ivory parchment paper in the other hand. He can see the inked dark words on the white that have instigated her sadness. On the stone pew next to where she was sat. There sits a bundle of pressed flowers in the discarded envelope.

He can smell the English meadow, chalky dried-sweet of them. Cow parsley. The crushed trumpet of a foxglove and the plain calm spice of lavender. English flowers sent to her here, in the middle of Bavaria.

“Forgive me, for intruding so on your solitude, only I heard your cries.” He says gently. She’s never seen his face look so reverent. She’s seen him smile. She’s seen him crush down every feeling and glimmer of emotion with a reverent mask on his face. She’s never seen him look so curiously sad before. Mirroring her own tumult.

More tears leak from her eyes as she squeezes them shut and turns to the side. Away from him. His kindness toward her made her ribs squeeze in tight with emotion.

“May I join you?” He gestures his hand to the pew beside her.

She tenses up for a moment. Hesitation sluggish on her tongue. She remembers all she had felt in the carriage. The lust she felt for him. Seeing them joined together in ways that were not faithful to her very beloved marriage vows to Kylo. But he looks so kind-

She nods. “Of course.” She cries. Wiping away more tears. The hand holding the letter laying down by her thigh.

He steps carefully into the abandoned wild space. Filled with flowers and old stone. Smell of moss and cold granite fills his nose. Gentle ebbs of her perfume and the salt of her tears steals his attention the closer her gets to her. The very presentable fact of her sadness churns in his chest like a storm. Roiling clouds and the raging fury of a wild sea. His long fingers delve into his pocket and he withdraws a clean square of cloth.

He stands just close enough to hand it across to her. She smiles mildly through her tears and takes it from his offered hand.

She watches his wise sapphire eyes flick down and catch on the letter in her grasp. The one written in her fathers hand.

“Something in the letter upsets you.” He states.

“On the contrary.” Iris says as she retakes her spot on the pew. She gestures beside her. Telling him to take a seat beside her if he wanted. He does so. Keeping a respectable distance between them.

“I actually received good news it’s just that-“ She chokes.

She places her hand over the envelope containing the flowers. “I feel rather homesick.” She sobs. Swallowing down her grief. She’s so overwhelmed by the nearness of him again. Specially with what she feels for him. Such a clutch or admiration and heartache and longing-

- _Affections? Love?_

“The flowers?” He asks kindly.

“My sisters and I. We used to pick them from the gardens to go in soaps or perfume or flower arrangements. It wasn’t much but it was the act. The doing of it. The making a dark day at Westwell a bit brighter with a clutch of petals and blooms.” She tells him. Leaving her band on the envelope. Reached out between them.

Draegan slowly reaches over and holds her hand. The one that clutched the flowers and his kerchief. The letter lay in her other hand.

He merely placed his palm over her small one. His grip and the span of his hand mightily dwarfed her own. Rings cool on his warm skin. He did it so gently it made more tears spring to her eyes. She shut her eyes. Squeezes them shut. And when she opened them again she turned to look at him. Watches his hair drift on the breeze around his handsome kind eyes.

She felt the warmth of his touch heat her blood up. He’s something beautiful and obliterating. Something like the suns heat. Or the moons beauty. Something lonely and far away reaching out to soothe her. And at the same time, so distant and admirable. 

It stabs a dagger right though his heart. Right into his back. Again and again. Seeing her grief like this.

“That is understandable. You’ve been parted from everything familiar and those you know and love.” He explains. “You traded one life for another.”

“But I’m happy- what can I have to be sad about? I’ve got a loving husband a home. A roof over my head. An income. A station. Kind friends.” She says. Fluttering up her fingers and cupping his hand slightly back.

The space containing his calcified heart leapt in his chest that she touched him back. She leaned onto his arm. Leaned against him. Just needing some stengrh to hold her up for a minute. Just for a minute. He smells so inviting. A foreign sunny shore with a breeze ebbing in from the sea. The cologne woven onto his clothes. Jasmine and berries.

Draegan tilts his head at her a little. Looking down where she rested against his shoulder. Head laying on the round of his shoulder. The proximity of her nearly undid him. The affection- he hasn’t been on the receiving end of affection fo quite some time.

“The heart and all it’s true wants can sometimes be a strange malforming creature to cater too.” He tells her.

“Everything I have here and sometimes, I can’t help it, I do miss them. I miss my father and my infuriating sisters. I miss my home. As poor a definition of one as it was. It wasn’t warm and it certainly wasn’t always kind, but it was my home.” She wipes away more gentle tears that slowly roll over her cheeks. She sits up. She can’t cry on his coat.

She sobs and swallows down enough to speak. “He also writes that the Sergeant I was engaged too is now wed to a rich girl he met in London. A Miss Shelton who poses to inherit twenty thousand pounds.” She bites her lip nervously.

“You didn’t feel any affection for this man?” Draegan asks carefully.

She shakes her head. “No. And I’m certain he felt nothing for me. It’s just- change.” She explains. “I’m sorry I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“Sadness distorts sense, my dear.” He explains wisely.

“I feel horrible for admitting it. But I can’t help but be riddled guilt for the way I left England. The way I left things and snuck away. I’ve never done anything so dishonourable in my life-“ She trails away.

“But it brought you all this. And Kylo.” He finishes for her. Smiling gently. She nods.

She’s on a knifes edge of a predicament here. She’s swapped so much pain for so much love. But she can’t help but drift back to the life she left behind.

“I know it seldom helps to say I understand your pain. But I do appreciate what it’s like to be cast out of ones home. Never able to go back. Losing a love like that is almost insufferable.” He comments. She turns and sees his meaning is meant with every fibre of his body.

“Iris. Would it settle you at all to know that while you may feel guilt for what transpired, you made the right decision.”

“That sergeant would never have loved you. Over time, his indifference would have turned to annoyance and then anger. He only cared about preserving his family name and his honour. You would have been kept under lock and key until your wedding. And long afterwards.”

Iris listens intently to what he has to say. Listens to the glimpse of what may have been her future. Tears dry on her skin. Of course if any being could tell her of the future; she’s not shocked it would be him. 

“He would keep you a miserable prisoner in all that wealth and prominence. He would vent his frustrations on you. Leave you to be humiliated by his family. Degraded. And abused. His eagerness to start a family and gain an heir would have culminated in regular assaults on your behalf. Whether you wanted him or not. He’d end up forcing you to bear his child.” 

Iris’s mouth gapes open a little.

“Leaving as you did was not only right. It was the bravest and best thing you could have done.” He finishes. “You wouldn’t be safe or happy. Happy as you are now.” He urges.

She’s grateful for his measures of clarity upon that matter. She nods. She doesn’t know what else she can say.

The sun starts to chip in through the woods behind him. Burns bright in his hair where he sits. Iris notices how seraphic he looks. How devastating. An irony.

To think she had ever been scared of this man-

“I know I’m grateful for the way you left England. Had you not. We might never have met. And it would be a sore barb to me indeed, to lose that of your friendship.”

‘ _And possibly even more than that’_ he thinks. ‘ _More than you can ever know.’_

“Thank you. Truly.” She says. It was awful to consider but she needed to hear that bitter truth. She needed justifying that her sordid path was in fact the right one. She never should have doubted.

“Your sisters and your father must miss you too?” He seeks.

Iris’s mood lifts a little. She smiles. “My father quipped if Ranlor has a spare room that he can come and hide away in for some peace and quiet.”

Draegan smiles to hear it. His mirth was so beautiful and rare to see, that it makes her mood lift.

“And my sisters are both either courting or soon to be engaged. They were invited to London to stay with rich friends of our acquaintance and made quite the impression. They want to come and see my new Bavarian home with their beaus in tow as soon as I name the day.” She tells.

He smiles in amusement. “And what of your mother?” He asks.

“He wrote nothing of her. For which I’m glad. I can only imagine she would have a great many things to say. None of which I care much to hear.” She tells him openly. He nods. Tension rife in her words. He knows the anger there stems from something too horrible to tread into. Thorns and mirror shards across ground that should not be re-trod.

She can only shudder to think what poisonous words would drip from her mothers fangs. Father wrote he wasn’t telling her they were in touch. She’s glad of it. For that woman deserves nothing.

“Who could love you and not miss you?” He asks. The sheer power and want of his words burns at his stomach.

Iris turns to him. “I wish I had but half of your faith in me.” She says quietly. Chuckling in disbelief. Raw grey eyes looking over him with such fondness. Such thanks. He seemed to know exactly what to say. 

“I know a good person when I meet one Lady Iris. You have goodness sinking right down to the marrow of your bones. Don’t feel guilt for what you left behind. Everything turned out just as it should.” He says knowingly.

She smiles a little.

They sit in silence for a while together. Watching the pond over the old crumbling chapel. Listening to the birds. She holds his hand again. She need offer no more thanks to him than that clutch of companionship alone.

~


	30. Duels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do we sense a shift in temper? Yes, yes I think we might-

When her tears stopped, she gathered up her envelope, tucked the dried flowers they’d carefully sent her inside safely. And clutched them close.

She hadn’t even read the two little inserts of parchment from her sisters yet either. They’d both written her a short missive. She knows that would only make the sadness greater if she read them now. She’ll keep them somewhere treasured and safe, and read them later at her leisure.

Draegan sees her back to the castle. Of course he does. His chivalry knows no bounds; he helps her pick down over the rocky ridge she’d climbed to get up to the abandoned chapel to take to her solitude.

Somehow, she feels strengthened when she delicately holds his offered hand. Clutching around the pale stones of his numerous silver rings. His touch is warm and gentle. He handles her like she’s the most precious artefact on this earth.

They walk back under the spread of the trees, and into the overgrown wild of the garden by the lake. In the amity of nature. They both know it is required of neither of them to break the silence. Listening to the shore lap and slap against the banks. The willow tree branches dragging like a comb through the water. Swaying with the current. The wind chipping through the trees. She knows Draegan understands the soothe of nature. The consoling vale of its presence.

She knows she feels comfortable in his company. He’s soothing. He makes her feel familiar to him somehow. Like she’s known him all her life. She keeps this to herself. A comforting little idle thought.

They stop when by the Grecian temple and admire the lake for a moment. The way it lies under the cloudy sky like a foggy mirror shard. Severing the wilderness of the landscape. There’s something calming about watching a body of water. Iris noticed more of the shy blush pink pond lilies decorate the murky bottle-green surface. She’s learnt that everything blooms when Draegan is near. Flushed with a bursting influx of life.

He takes a look across at her as she stands and admired the small lake. The way the ripples crease its surface. Watches the wind ruffle her hair and tug at the train of her lilac dress. He still sees how raw and red the skin around her eyes is. Stained by her sadness and her salty tears. She clutched that envelope so tightly in her hands. Protecting its contents.

“You um- won’t tell Kylo about my being upset will you?” She turns back to him. A pinched brow crowning her expression of worry.

“Of course not.” He answers with a lot of heart behind his words. She notices his piercing eyes are as calming to gaze into as a frothing blue ocean.

“But if you’ll allow me the liberty to say so, I think you should tell him yourself of the reasons for your sadness.” He bargains gently.

His hands loosely tucked behind his straight back. Chest set straight and upright. Stance echoing faintly of his time in military command. The fighting that lingered far back in his life, many years ago now. But if she knows anything about soldiers, it’s that a life in the army leaves its mark.

Iris’s frown deepens. “How could I? It would hurt him to know-“

“It will hurt him more if you keep it concealed from his knowledge.” He points out softly.

“Iris, he values and loves you and your happiness and safety more than that of his very own life. I’ve seen it. He atleast deserves to know if something has caused you hurt.”

Iris lowers her eyes to the letter and swallows. She drags her fingertips along the dried cow parsley flower. Out of the corner of her eye. She sees Draegan step closer.

“I’m so used to keeping quiet. It’s all I’ve ever done. Containing things to myself.” She says idly. It’s what she’s done her whole life. She’s been privy to forever being her own person.

“I’ve always had to be hurt alone. Be happy alone. Angry alone... Its an action that comes naturally to me. And I’m ashamed to even admit that out loud.” She cries. Biting the inside of her lower lip in shame.

“You can bury those old instincts. I promise you. You don’t have to do anything alone anymore should you wish.” He informs her. “You have Kylo. In sickness and in health as I believe the vows now go.” He smiles lightly. She does too.

She turns her head and looks up at him.

Even in this pale light, his skin still glows. His hair is as resplendent as ever. Laying it’s straight silk over his shoulders. Never with a strand out of place. Iris is always in awe, until she remembers what deep ancient power lives in his bones. What a enigma this man still is to her. The more she’s around him, and the less she knows.

“It’s so gratifying to think I have people to rely on.” She remarks. So many it’s almost dizzying. She must remember that she’s not Miss Ashton anymore. She was fortunate to have far more than her meagre upbringing in England offered.

She smiles at him again. He returns the calming gesture. They slowly walk around the pond and back up through the gate to Ranlor’s well kept gardens. Draegan opens the creaking iron gate for her. Iris’s mind wanders about him as she steps through and thanks him for his chivalry.

She ignores the way the treacherous wind drifts and swirls around his chest. Bringing to her a bolt of longing at the reminder of his delicious cologne. The icy hair drifting on the air. Tangled with suns light like precious white gold.

She’s beginning to feel how his eyes pierce her skin when her back is turned. That, coupled with his recent behaviour in regards for her and her safety. It’s a knotted ball of wool she’s trying to unpick in her mind. Trying to find a strand coherent enough to follow-

She wondered if his reasons for coming to Ranlor were true. If he was concealing malice about his persons, he was the best actor she’d ever seen.

She can’t understand how Draegan can tolerate her company with such absolute equanimity. The man who was his last lover, seeing them in their wedded bliss. That can’t be easy to stomach? Can it?

He’s been nothing but gentlemanly toward her. It does make her wonder if he’s a plot she’s unaware of.

As they are walking along. She realises she’s been drowning and stewing in her own complex thoughts for several minutes. She light heartedly makes a comment about seeing the gardens in the sunshine and how she can’t wait.

“I’m sure you’ll find them excessively beautiful. Maybe even more than the snow.” He smiles back.

Draegan doesn’t pretend he couldn’t read every single worry that just swam through the churning tide of her mind. He doesn’t let on. He wouldn’t wish to alarm her. He just wished he could clarify with her as to why he truly was at Ranlor Castle-

Their conversation turns to one of their favourite people in Ranlor; Ravi.

Iris tells Draegan she’s been attempting to give him some schooling in sketching lessons. He had asked her to help him draw the frogs in the pond in the orangery. And some butterflies. And the bluebirds that hopped around in the branches near his treehouse. She complied of course, but they agreed getting Ravi to sit still and focus was never easy.

The only way to entice him into staying in one spot was to promise him something edible from the kitchen, or let him see or hold one item of the various weaponry around the castle. The medieval knives or swords pinned to the old thick walls. Draegan tells her he’s to blame if the boy suddenly develops an interest in all things Egyptian.

They talk lightheartedly as they ascend the stairs up to the book room where Draegan knew Kylo would be awaiting on them. They slowly come towards the open door and can hear the tell-tale rumble of Kylo’s voice chatting softly away to their young pesky ward.

He watches Iris come to a slow stop. Looking at her in profile. Stood there. Gnawing on the inside of her lower lip. Brow pinched. Moonstone eyes looking pensive. Glancing into the room before her.

Draegan stopped a respectable distance away from her. She hears his whisper bolster her courage.

“It’ll be alright.” He tells softly.

“He is of an age when women spoke their mind and damned the consequences. I promise you, your sharing with him won’t be in vain” He carefully explains.

She turns her head and he nods lightly at her. She nods a polite thank you at him before she steps in the room. Draegan lingers in the doorway. Only just standing in the room. On the fringes of the book room. Treading the border between the hallway and the doorcase.

Iris sees her husband sat on the settee by the fire with Ravi. The boys stick thin legs dangle off the edge whilst Kylo and his enormous heft takes up a great chunk of it. Kylo had a book sloped on his thighs. As soon as he lifts his head and sees her. His face fills with a kind worried expression. He hands Ravi the open book and walks straight to her. Wraps his palms over her hips.

“Thank heaven you’re alright, dove. I was worried.” Her husband insists as he folds an arm over her back and draws her in to place a kiss at her temple. His other hand cupping her head. Enclosing the back of her skull in one grip.

She sighs happily. His worry and affection almost brought forth her tears again. She tucks her head into his chest and wraps her hands up around his back too. Holding him.

Kylo opens his eyes and looks behind him. Seeing in the shadow of the doorway where Draegan lingers. Pale hair and face stark and marble white. Eyes glisten a wet blue in the shadows of that hallway.

He nods to him. A silent but meaningful token of his appreciation to the man.

Ravi suddenly runs full speed across the room and peers up at Draegan. Clutching onto his large hand and trying desperately to drag him into the room. Clamouring madly to continue their lesson. Tugging on Draegan’s long arm. Like an ant attempting to pull up a willow tree by its roots. Draegan smiles kindly but stays firmly where he is.

“Perhaps we can continue them tomorrow, _mitr_.” Draegan soothes him so kindly even in rejection. Speaking the Hindi word for friend to his young protégé. He always thinks Ravi deserves to hear endearments in the native tongue of his own people.

He looks up into the room, looking tenderly at the way Kylo brushes stray hairs off Iris’s brow. Thumbs ghosting over her cheeks. He swallows back a cloying emotion that sat heavy in his throat and looks down and plasters on a smile for Ravi.

“Let’s look into weaponry tomorrow. I promise.” He says to the boy. Ravi looks rejected but he accepts with good grace. Dejectedly going back to his books on the settee.

Draegan turns away from the door. Moving away as silent as the shadows he so often clinged too.

He’s taking a deep breath as soon as he was out of sight. Rings clack softly on the wall as he presses his hand there. Breathing away the pain that crushes his chest. Denting his ribs. Stabbing his dead heart. The want and the need that burned on his tongue like the foulest acid. He pushes his desires back. Again and again. It’s a poison to the man who can usually take anything he wants. He takes himself off to solitude. It was safer that way. Safer for all.

Kylo takes his wife’s hand and pulls her to sit near him on the chaise opposite Ravi. Gathers up her hands in his gigantic ones. Careful not to crush the envelope she holds in her hands. Peering down he’d corresponded with her father enough times to know the looped careful scrawl is his hand.

“Tell me what has you so upset.” He asks gently. “News from Westwell? All good I hope?” Kylo’s asking. His voice on edge. Ready to spring into action. His brow is creased with worry for her.

Iris nods. She takes her hands away from his for a minute. Opens the envelope and shows him the contents. All the dried flowers. Plucked from an English garden. From that of her former home.

“Just. A brief jolt of homesickness is all.” She explains. Brushing it off as if it’s mundane.

“That may be all. But it’s not nothing.” Kylo’s insisting firmly. Voice level and soft.

Pulling her to him she rests her head in the crook of his big shoulder. Warmed from the fire and comforted by the sound of his voice moving through his chest. More calming than rain patting on a window pane. Or thunder wrecking the forest when she was inside and snug and safe, watching the storm ravage everything.

With his arm around her, she was the safest she’s ever been.

“I just miss their company. I miss walking into my fathers study. The smell of the books and his vanilla essence pipe tobacco. I miss not hearing my sisters screeches and their silly flirting interjections.” She tells him. He rests his chin on her hair. Strokes her back.

“Why is it you couldn’t disclose these feelings to me personally?” He seeks. Iris nuzzled into his cravat. Smelling the clean linen and the scent of his soap that swirled against them base of his chin and his neck. Bramble cologne woven into his clothes.

“I felt too ashamed. Look at all you’ve given me? All you’ve done and risked to marry me. You’ve given me everything a woman could dream of. How could I ever tell you-“ She asks. He hears the pain in her voice.

Kylo closes his eyes and kisses the top of her head. “What pains you. Pains me. And you never need to keep a thing to yourself. No matter how you may think it seems to me.” He urges.

“I can’t help rid you of sadness if I don’t know it’s cause, little dove.” He says. Stroking his big paws up her arms. His lips nudge at her temple. She feels his words as well as hears them.

“I could never censure you for missing your home.” He tells her. She pulls back so she can look into his eyes. Those melting honey-granite eyes she adores so much.

“I just am so used to silently dealing with my despair. It’s what I’ve always had to do. Forgive me for not coming to you. Solitude seemed natural to me in ways I can’t even describe.” She tells.

“Nothing you ever do could warrant needing my forgiveness.” He explains. Leaning in and gently kissing her lips. She sinks into his indulgent kiss. How he does it she’s no idea- he makes every small kiss a sacred act.

He kisses softly. Small coaxing of his lips to hers. Never too much. Just enough.

“What does your father write?” He asks when he pulls back. Humming words against her mouth. His beautiful velvet lips slip over hers again in another embrace. Barley pulling back to talk.

“It seems Flora and Posy have found themselves a beau each.” She declares quietly. Cheeks pink from his kiss. Even his nearness makes her blush. His kisses send sharp arrowheads of lush sensation to shoot to her fingertips and her toes.

“Lord in heaven help those poor doomed souls.” Kylo’s insisting with humour.

Iris chuckles in agreement. “I hope those dear men have strong constitutions.” She hopes. “Nothing less will serve them well.”

“Your father is in good health?” Kylo asks. He knows not to breathe a word about her mother. They both do. They both know full well where that harpy stands in their thoughts and considerations. She is worth less than the mud on Kylo’s boots.

“He is. He writes a quip about wishing to visit to give his bleeding ears a much needed rest.” She smiles.

Before she had even finished her words. Kylo speaks. His voice overlapping hers.

“Invite him. Write to him to visit at his earliest convenience if you should wish. Tell him when the air is cleared in England after our scandalous elopement settles, that I will gladly welcome my father and my two pests-in-law into Ranlor with open arms.”

“And my mother?”

“If she has the temerity to show her face in my country- I hear the dungeons are very uncomfortable. That should suit.”

Iris laughs. She loves his wicked teasing humour. She cups his cheek and presses her lips to his softly. Humming in pleasure. Sweet fire licks at her bones from the bliss of touching his lips.

“The pests-in-law will want you to throw a ball.” She says.

“I’ll throw a bloody ball each night they’re here if they want it.” He says.

“Don’t let Jomar catch you saying that. He may faint.” Iris smiles.

“I mean it, Iris. This is your home now too. You can fill it with hundreds of silly vapid friends of no consequence if you should wish. Or your family. If you had a score of hideous old batty aunts tucked away in some village somewhere that you would want me to meet. I’d meet them all and smile like a senseless idiot, if it’s what it took to make you feel less homesick.” He explains in great detail.

“I only have one great aunt I’m afraid. And she doesn’t even like to leave her front parlour, let alone England. So rest assured on that my darling husband. You are quite safe.” She informs him. Idly wondering just what Aunt Lavinia would make of Kylo- if they had ever had the misfortune to meet.

Kylo most probably wouldn’t fit into the elderly woman’s house in a comfortable fashion. And she’d sit there grumbling about having a foreign man from strange lands in her home. She never did like people-

“My sentiment stands.” He tells her playfully. Voice as rigid as stone with finality. She knows this. And she adores him for it.

She dried her raw eyes and the ancient paths of salt that caused the pain, and settled down to lean against his chest. The air between them cleared of all misunderstanding and secrecy.

She huddled into her husband. Made a vow to herself to open up her cautious heart to him in all things in the future. Be bolder. Braver.

She’s not a quivering little miss anymore. She’s the wife of a great and Lordly man. She must try to remember all that her title entails.

They huddle against one another. She’s curled up in his chest. Kylo’s leaning back on the settee, one leg up and one sprawled off and he starts getting bossy with Ravi. Asking him questions every now and then about his schooling and teaching him rude words in Bavarian. Iris tuts and disapprovingly swats his shoulder when he teaches him a particularly lewd rhyming song.

They stay in the book room with their student, until readying for dinner beckons them both into separate bathtubs and into separate hands to be dressed by their valets and maids.

Kylo beats her down the dining room. By the time her hair is pinned and thick wreaths of jewellery sit cold and heavy on her throat, it’s half an hour more time than it took her husband to pull on breeches and boots.

‘A ladies appearance takes time and the utmost precedence...’ Her ladies maid Rose says wisely. Nodding in that very European way that suggested she was right- and dared invite people to disagree with her. Iris smiles. She’d love to see the grouchy frown on Kylo’s face as he’s kept waiting for his dinner whilst his wife takes her sweet time to have her rose petal scented hair arranged pleasingly.

The grand hall dressed in all its usual beautiful finery for them. Stars blazing and twinkling in the huge windows over a blanket of spiked pine tree tops. The fire is lit and roaring copper gold. A bundle of their hounds keep warmed in front of it on the wolf pelts scattered across the cold tiles.

The table always looks so finely presented. Iris’s amazement for their Butler and his skill with laying a strong and attractive dinner setting knows no bounds.

He put a crimson velvet runner on the table. Tall tapered silver candle holders balancing thick long upward drips of ivory candles. Rich ripe red fruits spill from the usual tiered silver platter. Sugared fruit. The granules of it catch and glitter in the fire and the candle light. Cranberries, plums, pomegranates and lush red apples. Dark blood cherries and mulberry moody dark plums and sanguine strawberries. All of it looked so tempting. Juicy fat and bursting with flavour.

The plates are flanked with all their army of cutlery. All silver too. Iris wagers that’s a whole chunk of this castles wealth in that service alone. The napkins are folded into some magnificent pattern. Perching on the plates like soft little white boats bobbing along on a silver sea.

Iris steals a sugared grape from the vine and lets it burst sweet wet on her tongue as she walks across to her husband. He always took a drink lounging on the settee. Usually with a wolf hound or two with their head sloped in his lap wanting their ears fussed.

Tonight they both match the sultry red touches of their dinner table. Kylo is all shadow and blood. A red cravat and a white shirt. Everything else black. A diamond pin winks at his neck, pierced in the cravat knot like a studded pearl on a sea shore. Iris has unknowingly chosen accordingly too. Tonight’s gown is a shimmering silver brocade. Kylo studies her as she walks across. Thinking it may very well exactly match the moonstone of her eyes.

A beautiful brocade silk, a modest train falls behind her feet. And dark rubies sit on her neck. Square gems framed with an ornate clasp of diamonds surrounding the jewels setting. Sprinkled all over the chain like too many ferociously bright, silver stars.

Around her neckline, there sits ruffled a slight addition of a trim of wispy white fabric. It’s so sheer, it’s almost invisible. A silver tide bordered by frothy white waves. It crests at her elbows too, the chiffon trim. Where the 3/4 sleeves end she prefers that cut. It means she can wear the dress in winter and summer. All the wealth to her name and Kylo smiles that some of her spendthrift habits from Westwell still cling tightly on.

Kylo watches her silver eyes flicker over the empty settee opposite. Chewing on her lower lip. Then she settles on the carriage clock on the far wall on the dresser. Chiming a half an hour past eight. She was tardy herself. But her mind wanders over the absence of the castles more demonic occupant.

“Is Draegan not intending on joining us for dinner?” She asks Kylo. Standing by the settee he’s draped across whilst he dodges Titus trying to lick at his ear.

“He told Jomar he prefers to eat earlier in the evening, in his chambers. I’ve no objections as to his particular schedule.” Kylo insists coolly. A calm carefree sort of tone in his voice. Not one of malice like there usually is when he speaks of all things related to Draegan.

Iris tilts her head at him lightly. “He’s a guest in this castle, Kylo.” She says with something that sounds so slightly disapproving.

“I am acutely aware of the meaning of the word-“ He answers. Stroking Titus’ big head. Hands roaming behind the hounds ears.

“So you’d have him eat in his room every night of his stay here like an italian widow. Or a prisoner?” Iris asks.

“We do have dungeons?” He points out.

“Kylo-“ She says with a sadness to her voice.

“Can we not absolve Draegan, for this dinner tonight, of the mere crime of showing up to wish us well on our wedding?” She seeks.

Kylo’s jaw grits. Swerved together as he thinks. “Alright. Send Jomar up with word. And quick about it too. I’m starving.” He smirks.

Iris sighs a smile and turns on her heel. Her dress skims the floor gently as she swishes away in a twirl of silver fabric and a scented cloud of roses, honey and pears. “Where are you going?” He asks her retreating back.

“I think such summons should come from the lady of the house. Don’t you think?”

“A rather excellent topside of rare roast beef hangs in the balance sweetness. Hurry along.” He calls lazily after her. Smirking. His temper set a little annoyed at the thought of Draegan joining them. But he supposed he can’t keep on hating him forever. It took enormous amounts of energy to be so hateful all the time.

He watches the silver figure of his love disappear into the darkness of the anteroom. Iris feels her skirts and her jewels sway as she makes her way up the stairs and winds her way to Draegan’s room. His blue and silver carefully decorated chamber. Up near the turrets. Nestled under the huge white columns of Ranlor’s turrets.

She hadn’t been into this part of the house since the day she decided to come exploring on her own. And she stumbled upon the attic of broken hearts. All the secrets and belongings of Draegan that Kylo had boxed up and shoved out of mind.

She wonders if Draegan felt anything-

Seeing the way Kylo had harshly ordered all memories of him relegated to the attic. Out of sight and mind and memory. And definitely cast out of love. She wonders if it wounded him as much as it hurt her to see it. To see such pain on both their behalf’s.

Maybe if Draegan had been arrogant and hideous and haughty. She could despise him. Hate the very air he breathes and each inch of the ground he trod under his feet.

If he had swanned back into Kylo’s life and knowingly and cruelly tried to shove her out of it, maybe she could hate him more. As it was, he’s only ever been a friend to her. A good friend and a great source of fascination and mystery and longing. She wonders how Kylo ever stopped liking him. Let alone loving him. He was a most impressive and respectful man. Ruthless and savage. In beauty and in temper.

She swallows her thoughts away as she steps up the dimly lit stairs. Candles perched on the walls. Throwing up gold and shade where the light doesn’t reach its glimmering fingers. She comes to the imposing tall doors of his chambers and knocks lightly. His calming voice answers. Muffled beyond the wood. “Come.”

She twists the handle and gently ebbs herself past the door and into the room. Gently imposing on his solitude. It seems an unfamiliar word on her tongue. But they are past the point of formality now. “Draegan-“ She calls to the room ahead of her. Peering her head into the candlelit space.

It truly was a gorgeous room. It’s occupant suited it accordingly and beautifully. The bed is an enormous fare. Just like the one in hers and her husbands room. It could sleep five comfortably if necessary. Except the one up here is a lighter limed-oak wood frame compared to Kylo’s mahogany and scarlet bed. Blood and almost black it was so dark. Draegan’s is like the sea and the sand. How very like them it is. The way she knows the pair of them.

This bed is guarded by thick drapes of crushed sapphire fabric that stand at the four poster corners. They looked like wrinkles and ripples on sun kissed water. The bed is flawlessly made and the quarter sawn parquet floor keeps a hint of cool about the room. The ceiling and half the walls down to the white wainscoting is blue too. Adorned with scrolls and gold gild. It feels like standing under a clouded blue sky in summer meadow. Sapphire and gold pieces of rich furniture guard the walls.

A long walnut gilded chest boasts a small looking glass and a modest array of glass vanity bottles, filled full of all the scents of him that smell always so divine. A silver hair comb rests by all shaped little bottles. Of course resplendent hair such as his was combed often.

The fire in the creamy stone half blazes. A huge mirror above the mantel throws the room back on itself. A lake of silver. Making the room seem bigger.

Iris can’t decide if he loves the heat or hated it. His balcony doors are thrown open and the cruel cold and almost spring night spills in. And there he stands on his stone balcony. High over the landscape like he was in the heavens watching down over the mortals on earth.

His back is to her and his hair is free. Shimmering on the night. Swaying on the breeze. Cloaked in starlight. There he stands, this devastating demon. A red gown on his tall frame. Swathing down his trim back in a spill of scarlet velvet. He turns at the soft coo of her calling his name. She said it so sweetly it made him smile.

He twists to look over his shoulder at her. Curtain of white silk flowing now over his shoulder. She can see his naked chest under the white shirt he’s undone low to his sternum. She gulps a little at the sight of so much exposed skin.

His pallor is the colour of acid milk. It looks deathly white. But not in a sickly way. He’s nowhere near the death he represents. His chest is strongly built. Strong arms tapering from a powerful set of broad shoulders. Next to Kylo’s crudely wide stature of course he looks slim. But on his own stead, Draegan is not without impressive power of muscle. His gown covers his bottom half. Tangled in with his considerably lengthy legs. She sees black high waisted breeches and that he’s barefoot.

She sees a glass goblet of wine in his hands. Long fingers clutch the top of the glass as he leans against the carved stone balcony balustrade, watching the stars. No rings on his fingers now. He is stripped of all opulent ornaments and outer layers.

A carafe full of dark ruby merlot stands on an end table by the window. Set next to chair and a abandoned novel. Something ancient looking and complex. Verbose thick with musty yellow pages.

He looks glad to see her. An easy calmness swills around him like a riptide. She can’t decide what’s more enchanting. His eyes glistening kindly, or the stars beyond his figure glowing flaxen off his silk hair.

“Iris.” He answers. Bowing his head to her. Holding his wine glass in one hand. Putting his back now to the landscape he so admired. He may be many things, but he was never one to turn his back on a lady. Especially not this one.

And furthermore, absolutely not when the sight of her in silks and jewels makes his gaze linger on her in appreciative ways, that it shouldn’t.

Her fine neck glitters red and silver in wealth. The dark blood of ruby jewellery sinks and rises with the movement of her breath swelling her collarbone up and down. Her dress is the colour of some enchanting frozen river suspended in snow and frost.

He can smell the chalk of powdery roses where her maid lightly swiped a fancy pink rouge over her cheeks. She wasn’t one for cosmetic paints. But she liked the dusting kiss of pink it put on her complexion. She knew and quite rightly didn’t care how some women proclaimed and regarded it as vulgar for a lady to paint her face. A little vanity won’t hurt.

She smiles and leaves the door ajar. Almost ducking behind it. Not wishing to intrude. This may be her home but she doesn’t apply that rule here. He’s lived in these rooms for longer than she’s been alive.

“I come bearing, firstly, an apology.” She insists. Her hand in the doorknob still.

“I’m most regretful that my husbands lousy temper has you hiding up here for all your meals. That’s not proper-“ She comments.

He chuckles to that. Smiling and looks down at his feet. Gliding into the room so smoothly with his even strides. Standing his wine down on the end table by the window. Eyes warmly assessing her honesty. Her open expression.

“And secondly, that we’d be delighted if you’d join us downstairs in the hall to dine. If you wished to-“ She offers.

He steps across to her and smiles. She can’t catch any hint of his feeling in his face. His smile was so capable at hiding things.

He hesitated. But then he doesn’t.

“I’d adore to accept. There’s naught up here but the stars for company. And though a pretty sight. They seldom make good conversation.” He jokes. Iris beams gratefully.

He sits to pull on his boots and follows her lead. Puffing out the candles of his room, cupping his fingers around the flame to guard it as he blows them out. Joining her in the hall. Leaving the smoke to drift lazily out the room. Curling tongue of it swept away outside to the night air.

They walk down. Iris explains to him the terse nature of Kylo’s temper when he was hungry. Draegan agrees.

“Patience was never, and never will be, his strongest suit.” He agrees. Iris laughs lightheartedly.

“Decidedly not.” She comments. “I learnt that simple fact during our courting back in England.”

“His spectrum of tolerance is the most Viking thing about him, I’ve always thought.” Draegan points out.

“That and his penchant for animals.” Iris adds. This makes him smile.

“He has the touch with the beasts. Always has.” Draegan agrees with a nod.

“Ironically enough, he has his magic touch with every animal but that of his own horse.” She remarks in mirth. Thinking of Erland’s preferences and how they shifted onto her after their elopement, and actually, long before.

Erland behaves like a spoilt puppy around Kylo. Trotting up to Iris like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth- after nearly throwing Kylo out the saddle and into the dirt.

He chuckles. “That big brute stallion has far more spirit and sense than Kylo gives him credit for.”

“He’s a softie for such a large creature.” She insists.

“He clearly needed the nurturing touch of a lady wife.” Draegan insists. Iris smiles thinking how true that statement is. Wondering if he meant the horse, or his vampiric master?

The pair of them come to the dining hall doors and Draegan holds one of them open for her. The great wooden thing groans under his touch. Cracking open.

Kylo turns and sees them coming into the room. Smiling and conversing as they walk.

“Were my ears burning?” He calls down the hall. Asking if he was being discussed.

“Close. But not quite. We were talking about your horse.” Iris comments as Draegan holds the door for her.

Kylo arches a brow. Unamused. “You mean, _your_ , horse?” He insists back to his wife.

The other day a servant burst in to see Kylo and Iris when they were having breakfast. Begging their pardon and saying that Erland was sick. He wasn’t standing. He was laying down and refused to move. Refused to eat. Refused to drink.

The poor stable lad was out of his head with worry thinking Kylo’s prize stallion was hurting or dying.

Kylo grumbles and slammed his napkin down on the breakfast table and stalked after the man. Not ill tempered with the lad. Just with the creature that was causing this commotion.

The whole way down to the stables he kept on repeating himself. Insistant to the lads worry. “He’s not sick. He’s not.”

“He might’ve hurt his leg mi’lord...” Jonas fretted.

“He hasn’t.” Kylo growls back quickly. Almost bored with the accusations. “Trust me.”

He gets into the stables with a belly full of churning anger and annoyance. He strides annoyed to Erland’s stall. There the great idiot is. On his side. Legs splayed out. Not moving his head. Eyes shut. The only way Kylo knows he’s not dead is the way his eyelids flutter and his great round belly moves with his breathing.

Erland lightly cracks his eyes open and looks at Kylo. And then promptly goes to sleep again. Tilting his head away. Not looking at him. Playing unconvincingly dead, like a swooning diva performing in a bad operetta.

Kylo’s curses him every name under the sun and in old norse.

He marches back to the house. Temper furring up his tongue. He strides into the breakfast room. Grabs his wife’s arm and drags her behind him the whole way back to the stable. “What if he is really hurt?” Iris asks him worriedly.

“He’s not.” Kylo bites back. Seething.

He pushes her into the stable stall and a miracle suddenly happens. Erland’s legs kick and flail in the air. He rolls over and stumbles onto his hooves. Whinnying and snorting and his tail arched high and ears pinned back as he practically flattens Iris to the stable wall and nickers all over her. Nudging his head at her tiny hands that stroked his neck.

“There’s your solution.” Kylo insists bitterly. Shaking his head and glaring at Erland as he arched his head over Iris’s back. His glittering black eyes looked _smug_ -

The stable lads let out a chorus of groans and sighs of relief. He really wasn’t sick. Kylo throws his arms up and storms away with a face like thunder.

Iris taps Erland on the nose with a finger after he leaves. “You need to be careful Erland. If you annoy him much more you’re skating on thin ice.” She warns the silly beast. She feeds him some chaff and makes sure he’s watered. She stays away from the sore subject for the rest of the day. Knowing Kylo would still be grouching over it.

Iris smiles at the grumpiness in Kylo’s voice as her and Draegan come to the settee where he lounges.

“Do not talk to me of that fool.” Kylo’s growling.

“Subject is a still a little sore I see.” Iris says. Kylo’s expression is blank and irritated as she pours him some more wine from the glass carafe Jomar left near him.

“You’ll be pleased to know that in eleven months time there may be the little pitter patter of tiny Erland hooves.” Kylo tells Iris as he drinks his wine.

Draegan smiles as he takes a seat opposite on the settee to Kylo. Iris pours Draegan a glass of wine and smiles so at hearing the news. He thanks her as she hands him a glass.

Draegan sips his wine and Cerberus whines and puts his head on the settee next to the demons knee. Looking up at him with his doleful great dane eyes. Draegan tilts a smile at the hound. Stroking his velvet ear. Cerberus starts to wag his tail lazily. Thumping the tiles below.

Iris likes that he warms to animals as much as Kylo does. She takes a seat next to her husband with her own glass of wine.

“Is Kana indisposed?” Iris asks sweetly.

“The poor old girl, and another chestnut mare is out to pasture from now on. Just grazing for them and protecting the impossible budding legacy of my greatest idiot.” He drawls grouchily.

“He covered two mares?” Iris asks with a look of surprise.

“Once they removed all the pails of oats and chaff from the field, Erland seemed to finally get down to the _crux_ of the matter with the ladies.” Kylo says over the rim of his glass.

Iris bursts out laughing. Draegan chuckles too. Eyes flicking up to Kylo. She puts her hand over her mouth to stop the dribble of red wine that threatened to spill. Coughing and spluttering it down.

“At the risk of sounding like my mother. That’s hardly a subject suitable for the dinner table.” Iris insists. Holding her wine glass in her lap.

“Speaking of such perils. Did you read the letters from your sisters at last?” Kylo asks.

Draegan looks over to Iris. Interested. Of course he was. He’s curious.

“You might not be at all surprised to find that Posy covered one entire side of her letter describing her new gown and her fiancés good looks.” Iris rolled her eyes. Kylo chuckles. Pest 1 and 2 sounded much unchanged.

“A typical occurrence I take it?” Draegan seeks.

Iris tilts her head. “I’m afraid the only things that fill my sisters heads is usually gossip, gowns and men. Leaving little room for sense, propriety and pragmatism.”

“They are young. Isn’t youths purpose to be silly and unencumbered by things that worry others-“ Draegan remarks.

Iris smiles. “It is indeed. My sense of pragmatism was hammered into me at a very early age as the eldest girl. But my sisters never had the worry of it. They are free to be vain and foppish and as coquettish as they want. I wouldn’t change that for them, as irritating as they can tend to be.”

Kylo’s smile tips up. He can remember her sisters silly antics. The night he first saw and met Iris as that ball, he remembers her siblings preening at him like swans showing off their feathers. Such confidence and brazen flirting. Iris had remained demure and quiet. Everything about her quiet calm beauty made him want more. He’s never been one to fall into interest via shameless flirts.

“I bet they must miss you greatly now they are the two vessels for your mothers hope for the family. They may better understand the situation you were trapped in.” Kylo says.

“I think my sisters are too headstrong and argumentative to ever let themselves be trapped. They are not like I was.” She says.

With using that word, Iris had just willingly described how she felt. Suffocated. Forced into accepting a match with Hux. Boxing her into a little miserable life to breed heirs and do nothing more of value.

Kylo reached for her hand in her lap and rubbed his thumb along the back of her knuckles.

Draegan swallows a gulp of his wine sadly as he watched them join hands. Lowers his eyes to the dog with its huge head near his thigh.

“Trust me when I this say to you, dove;” Kylo begins. “Everything fell into place where it should. Everyone got what they wanted. Mm, well. Apart from that awful Titian haired sergeant. But now he’s got his pretty insensible bride to convey his heirs.”

“And the best part of all that?” He adds. Iris turns her head to look at him. His eyes melt and his smile warms her backbone.

“Your mother got _nothing_ she wanted to happen. Now that, gives me such an enormous sense of satisfaction, I can’t even begin to tell you.” He grins.

Iris laughs. Draegan smiles a little also. He could see the great weight of the pain of her mother weighting down her mind still. He felt such anger for the abuse she as suffered at her hands. He’s glad she’s free of it.

“Well. That’s always cause for gaiety.” She comments. She raises her glass.

“I’d drink to that wealth of happiness.” Draegan says. Lifting his glass in a toast to her. Kylo’s smiles and lifts his too.

“Thank you.” Iris smiles at the pale demon sat opposite. She was still so touched by his comforting her this afternoon. Their moment of friendship and revelry is rather ruined by Kylo.

“I swear on all that’s holy, Jomar better get in here with that roast soon. Or I’m going to steal his favourite slide rule and feed it to Brutus.” Kylo’s whining. Head thrown back on the settee.

“Yes. You’re positively wasting away.” Draegan piped up jokingly. Calm smile on his lips.

“You always take his side.” Kylo narrows his eyes nicely at the demon.

“Someone has too. You never do.” Draegan fires back nicely.

“He loves me. I am the light of his life. He’d be lost without me.” Kylo insists.

Draegan shares a warm smile with Iris. He’s so amusing and petulant. They were right about elements of his Viking nature remaining. This was definitely one of them.

The doors open at the end of the hall. Kylo groans. “Oh, Thank Odin. What kept you?” He calls the the gaggle of footmen bringing in the main course and it’s many accompaniments.

Jomar raises his brows coming into the room. Firstly, at seeing the three of them together. Kylo tolerating Lord Verros and his presence with absolute equanimity. And secondly, because Kylo was being his usual bratty self.

“Gallant and understanding, as ever my lord.” Jomar comments wittily as he crosses to them as dinner is laid on the table. He brings down another carafe of wine for them all. Refilling their goblets.

“If you’re going to behave like a gigantic man-child and throw your toys out the bassinet, I will send for a nanny to come put you to bed without supper.” Jomar threatens as he pours Kylo’s wine glass full. He served Iris and Draegan first. That really got Kylo’s teeth gritting together.

“I’m going to put Erland’s droppings under your pillow tonight, for that.” Kylo promises.

“Mmm. Very good. Just let me know if you want your food chewed for you also.” Jomar sarks quietly with a smirk. He was on fine form tonight with his rapier sharp wit.

“I’ll wait til you put your set of false teeth in, dear.” Kylo snaps back after his retreating back.

“Honestly Kylo-“ Iris warns for bordering on being dismissively rude to their Butler. “How old are you?” She asks. They stand and moved to the table to make a start on their delicious dinner.

Kylo points out sulkily “He always starts it.” He insists plainly.

“I hasten to add that you do urge him on.” Draegan points out as he takes his seat. Standing his wine down on the table in front of his setting. Kylo pulls out his wife’s seat for her.

“Eat something for heavens sake. Maybe that will help absolve your pettiness.” Iris says. Helping themselves to this great feast before them.

A great bloody topside of roast beef. Pink in the middle and succulently cooked with many garden green woody herbs. There’s also a roast goose stuffed with chestnuts and sage. A huge platter of honey and thyme roasted carrots and parsnips and onions. There’s a big plate of buttered asparagus and mashed turnips with chives and butter. Cook learnt that was her Ladyship’s favourite.

They tuck in with glee. Iris isn’t surprised Kylo puts away plate after plate of the roasted meat. She notices Draegan eats more in moderation. His palate seemed more human than Kylo’s animal one. He eats a fair portion of everything. And especially the wine. That seemed most favoured by him.

The meal is, as ever, excellent. Conversation eventually steers onto them telling her stories of their days in battle. Fighting side by side together as they did for many years. By the time the plates are empty and the candles have burned low, they are laughing together and conversing like the oldest friends in the world.

They are back by the settees and the armchairs by the fire. Crammed in with the hounds on the floor and drinking wine. Iris tucks her feet up, knees slanted under her and rests into Kylo’s side.

Draegan sits opposite with his long legs crossed as he lounges back suavely. Iris is beginning to suspect he never looks discomforted or out of place. He seems composed wherever he is. She likes that they are all growing comfortable together. She likes that Kylo’s frosty temper to him is thawing. No contention in the air.

They pass away the night talking and only stop when Iris slumps asleep against Kylo’s shoulder.

“I think your Lady tires of our conversation.” Draegan comments.

“That and the wine. Bored her to sleep.” Kylo jokes chuckling. He sets his glass down.

He hoists her up and carries her up for bed. Bidding Draegan a warm goodnight as he went. Iris folded into his arms. Her head against his chest. Kylo’s arms around her back and under her legs.

“Goodnight.” Draegan replies back kindly as Kylo walks away. Amazed to find he didn’t completely detest having dinner with Draegan again. He’ll never tell Iris that she was right.

He drinks the last of his wine and watched him carry her away up to bed. Sat by the fire until the night drags on for him too. He goes back up to his room to keep the stars company once again.

For the first time in a long while, Draegan notes how he doesn’t fall asleep with that dreadful feeling of loneliness crushing in on his chest.

-

The next morning, for the first time since she’d come to Ranlor, Iris opened her study door and reeled back in fright to find the usually vacant room, not vacant.

She shrunk back a little in the doorway. Took a step backwards. There’s an unusually tall wall of a human by her walnut bookcase. The one that lined the wall leading along to the double doors. The bookcase curled around the curved wall leading to the mouth of her door.

Everything else was usual. The fireplace it’s usual amber roar in the creamy stone half. The velvet green curtains the deepest shade of mint green flank the windows. Reflecting the themes of the thawing forest outside. The pointed black and white tiles of the floor are soft, shining, reflecting the meagre overcast sun and the shimmering orange fire making the air cosy.

A plate of biscuits and a steaming teapot of Assam blend lays in wait on her desk. Today’s vase of flowers sits proudly on her desk too. It is a great gathering of bright punchy red and flaming orange tulips in a blue and white antique vase. The settee cushions had been plumped and sit straight on the furniture.

This room is normal. The company in it is not. But it doesn’t follow that they are unwelcome.

Iris smiles, bewildered, and steps into the room.

Her husband is stood very close to the bookshelf, facing it, with a certain young boy sat on his shoulders. Ravi’s small little twiggy legs looped down over Kylo’s massive meaty chest. He looked comically small there. Kylo’s hands could ably wrap around his boys tiny kneecaps.

Iris laughs at the fact Ravi is steadying a pile of books on top of her husbands head. Ravi struggling to reach one up very high. Even perched on the vertiginous plain that was Kylo’s shoulders.

“Never thought I’d see the day someone uses the almighty Kylo Ren as a bookcase.” Iris comments as she moves into the room. The meagre silk train of her dress rasped along the tiles after her steps. A sound Kylo forever associated with her. Along with the spray of her perfume bottle. The glitter and glimmer of diamond jewels moving around her neck. And the rustle of warm bedsheets where she lays next to him.

“Morning.” Ravi calls chirpy across to Iris with a big toothy grin. Clasping his fingers around a dusty book he was reaching for. Kylo turns and looks past Ravi’s front hanging over his head. Shaggy black hair in his eyes. “Morning wife.” He crooks a smirk at her.

She looked deuced pretty today, that’s what he thinks. She was wearing that particular shade of teal-mint that she seemed to favour. A plain silk dress. Petite navy slippers on her feet. Her hair scooped messily back off her face. He likes that he knows that was by her own hand. Her wildly arranged hair. Rose has a fine touch with coiffures. Iris was decidedly less graceful, but no less lovely.

“Are you pair of ruffians depriving me of my books?” She asks nicely. Raising brows. Stepping closer to the unruly pair. Reaching up on tiptoes and taking the stack of books from off her husbands head. Dust smearing her hands as she gathers the books into her arms so her husband didn’t break his neck with the thick volumes.

“Indeed. I’m afraid he’s most particular taste. Draegan had him learning about Ancient Egyptian war and battle strategy yesterday. And now he wants to learn more about hand on hand combat.” He says.

Kylo turns his head and smiles at her. He wishes he could lean across and kiss her for looking so pretty. But Ravi’s small legs impede him somewhat. He held him firmly in place so he wouldn’t topple backwards. He had a long way to fall after all.

Iris looked down the stack in her hands. Books on hieroglyphics, Egyptian boxing and sword fighting. A book on the English civil war royalist army.

“Quite an array of titles. You’ll be so well read, Ravi. I think you’ll fall over constantly from the weight of all that knowledge in your head.” She jokes. Ravi laughs. Leaning up to clasp another volume within reach of his little arms.

“From here we go onwards to learn some lessons about swords.” Kylo says. This is a castle after all. They aren’t short of weapons.

“No medieval maces. And as long as you boys are careful- and please don’t do anything boisterous that will end up with someone losing an eye or cutting some fingers.” Iris asks as she moves over to her desk and sits down to pour herself some tea. Thinking that by the time he’s an adolescent, there won’t be a book in this castle that Ravi hasn’t read.

“We’ll try-“ Ravi answers for Kylo. Who turns and gives his wife a look.

“Apparently we will.” He reiterated to his smiling wife as she sipped her hot tea. Smiling over the rim. Cradling her saucer up to her chest. Resting the dainty cup down again.

Kylo walks along the bookshelf and Ravi has quite the collection amassed by the time he’s finished. Balancing more on Kylo’s head. Getting dust in his hair. Iris finishes her tea, and accompanied them onto their weaponry lesson. Just to ensure they didn’t behave like foolhardy boys too much.

Ravi rides all the way to the ballroom, still on Kylo’s shoulders. They come to the large space and see Jomar is laying out a great number of swords on the far side table. All polished and pristine blades that gleam in the light of the big bright room.

Plenty of daylight cresting across the floor from the big open wall of windows opposite. Kylo smiles at his Butler. Painstakingly measuring out the swords so they all say proud and neat and straight. Silver and gold buffed to a high shine. Swords laid out from more eras than Iris can name. There must be fifty at least. Resting on the plain bed of a crisp white sheet.

Iris knows a Jomar man has always been Kylo’s second hand man in all the various wars and campaigns Kylo’s fought in over his lifetime. Such long standing familiarity with his butlers ancestors explains why they bicker like a married couple. They were practically attached at the hip. She knows Jomar is capable of handling not only a household and it’s chores; he’s rather capable with weapons too. Weapon tending is in his blood.

Ravi clamours for his father. So much so Kylo groans as he reaches over his shoulders and clamps his big hands around the little imp with his clutch of books. Bends down to take one knee and lifts him off as if he weighs no more than a feather.

Kylo stays on one knee as he watches Ravi race across to his Pita stood at the table. Jomar affectionately rubs his sons shoulder as he stands by him. Iris laughs as Ravi reaches out to touch. “Ah-“ Jomar harshly cuts him off. Tapping his child’s outreaching hand.

“If you touch that, I will personally hurt you. I just finished cleaning these.” He tells his son in ribbing. Ravi frowns and says something in Hindi to his father. Jomar counters back with a frown and some words that absolutely heralded the end to their conversation.

Iris comes up to her husband and places a hand on his shoulder before he rose back up to his feet. He places his hand over hers. His massive grip dominating her own.

“How many years of history do those swords represent?” She asks him kindly. He stretched up to his full height. Straightening out his back and standing beside her as they walked over to inspect the sharp weapons all laid out.

“Some of them are as old as me. If not older.”

“Practically ancient then?” Iris jokes with a petite smile. Hands clasped in front of her as they walk along.

Kylo narrows his eyes at his Lady love. “Careful-“ He counters with a teasing look on his face.

They come to the edge of the table and Jomar slaps Ravi’s hand away once again. “Bheta-“ He warns lowly in his ‘do-not-cross-me’ sort of tone. The same one he gives to Kylo when he’s particularly stubborn.

“Goodness.” Iris remarks as she looks out at the table filled with knifes and blades and swords of every kind. Some shapes and sizes she’d never seen before. From rapiers, short swords, katanas and sabres to broadswords that were half the length of her body and twice the width of her arm.

“I knew this was a castle. I had no idea it would be quite so well armed.” Iris says. She puts her hand under the gilded scabbard and the hilt of the biggest sword on the table. When she tried to lift it she could barely get it off the cloth.

“Zweihänder sword my love. 16th century. Some can nearly weigh up to fifteen pounds to lift.” Kylo tells her.

“How come she gets to touch?” Ravi grumpily asks them all.

“She’s a Lady.” Jomar tells him with a nudge to the shoulder to remember his manners. Kylo and Iris chuckle at the boy.

“I had no idea there were so many types.” Ravi piped up.

“Each continent on earth must have its own version of a sword, my dear.” Kylo insists.

His hand gravitates to a particularly old looking sword. One that looked impossibly worn. And it wasn’t smooth either. It was a crudely finished sword. Uneven and jagged. Double edged blade. Straight bladed with a slight taper at the end. The handle is wrapped in worn black strips of leather. She had a feeling his hands grip sits rather well worn on the grooves in that hilt. Runes are a scratched down the middle of the blade. The pommel is wide and flat. The sword itself is not overly long. She’d guess around thirty or so inches.

There’s a nostalgic look on Kylo’s face as he leans forwards and brings the sword into his hand. His touch was as familiar as anything she’d ever seen. “This was my first sword. An ulfberht sword. The one of my people. I learnt how to fight with this.” He tells Ravi

He steps back from the table. Throwing and twirling the hilt around in his hand. Catching it again so ably. Iris could see the nostalgia in that touch. He arcs it though the air away from them all. Listens to now it cuts the air. Watches it glint dully in the sun.

Kylo shows the sword to Ravi. Carefully pointing it downwards in his hands to show the boy. One hand on the blade the other carefully holding the hilt. He watches Ravi reach out a fingertip and touch the runes scratched into the metal running down the middle of the flat blade.

“My father had this sword crafted for me on my fifteenth birthday - well, we called them name days back then.” He tells Ravi.

“What do the runes say?” Ravi seeks curiously.

“It’s a death rune. I carved it there in the hope it would be the last thing wished upon my enemy.”

“Always a drama queen.” Jomar insists. Wiping a speck of dust off the sheet before them.

“There’s a table full of knives here. I suggest you guard your tongue carefully.” Kylo sarks to him.

“Can I hold one?” Ravi asks hopefully. Implementing his doe eyes at Kylo. He growls in thought and puts his Viking sword back on the table in the place it had come from. Wonky though. Jomar has to reach out and straighten it. He did have such exacting standards.

“You can hold a small one. With the scabbard still on.” Kylo bargains. Ravi accepts. It’s better than nothing after all.

Kylo looks over the table and plucks out a short sword. A cutlass. It’s not too heavy. Still strapped into its simple leather scabbard, Kylo holds the flat of the double edged blade and passes it across to his excited protege. Ravi’s little hand holds the grip far down. Right near the cross guard.

He steps back and weights it in his small hands. Swinging it around. Slicing it through the air in a very unmusical manner. Kylo grabs a sheathed sword of his own.

“I’m going to remove myself out of the dangerous area.” Iris insisted. She retires across the room to the chaise. Smiles as she folds her skirts out the way and sits herself down on it. Watching Kylo spar with Ravi.

“Sword fighting is nothing if not a delicate balance my dear.” He begins his lesson.

“Right. Now remember to pay attention to your feet. One stumble and that’s your life gone. And focus- nothing is worse than losing your focus for even a second-“ Kylo points out. Standing with his feet planted wide. One in front of the other.

“Body slanted to the side if you can. Lead with your arm. That way your opponents blows you can dodge or side step easier. Think how fencing works-“ He teaches. Iris smiles. Such a patient teacher. “If you face your enemy full on. They have more chance to stick you. And you don’t want that.”

Kylo demonstrated by guiding Ravi to stand facing to him. Miming jabbing gently an upwards thrust into his ribs. He angles him to the side and demonstrates how to dodge.

“Do you know what one of the main proponents for training to be an able bodied sword fighter is?” Kylo’s asks Ravi.

“Modern feeble folk-“ Kylo starts. He turns to Iris and Jomar and smiles sweetly. “No offence-“

“-Simply don’t have the stamina our ancestors used to have. Men of my age could carry their swords for miles and still have the energy to battle for hours upon hours and keep up their strength. Where do you think you need the strength?” He asks Ravi. He moves back to the table as he speaks and lays his Viking sword down. Picks up a rapier with a complex looking silver handle with red leather.

“Arms.” Ravi says. Cutting his little sword in an arc that narrowly missed Kylo’s knee. Kylo comes back, saw his attack and sidestepped it.

“Physical conditioning my boy. I was trained with a sword in my hand from the tender age of six. And the strength for it actually comes from the wrists, the abdomen and the shoulders. Think how you would have to twist and use your arms and your tummy to turn.” Kylo explains. Tapping the parts of the body he named on Ravi with the tip of his sword.

“And to command a sword gracefully. You have to be agile, fit and possess good natural rhythm with your movements. Even the most skilled swordsman can fail with a poorly timed jab or an ill thrust.” He tells. Starting to clash swords gently with Ravi. Teaching him to block and attack and counter an attack.

Iris smiles watching them step back and forth. The delicate dance of their learning.

She especially eyes the way her husbands back moves under his satin backed waistcoat. The jut of his strong shoulders as he moves his arms.

She was right in what she thought of him when they first met. His size equates to another age. An age when men were serious warriors. Able to undertake great physical endurance and strain. The cut of his back tells her this. The thick set muscles he’s gained from years of holding a sword and using it as a soldier.

Kylo purposefully left his body open for an attack by Ravi. Who tapped the sword to the back of Kylo’s hand and made him drop it on his feet. Ravi laughed in victory and Kylo’s upset smile was all an act. “Too quick for me.” He faked his disappointment. Kneeling to reach his sword on the floor.

Ravi’s attention is diverted to the open doors of the anteroom, thrown open, where a tall pale figure was just walking by with a book in his hand. “Draegan!” Ravi shouts. Running full pelt towards his favourite history teacher. Sword still in his hand. Swinging by his side.

Draegan looked up and noticed them all n the ballroom. Kylo turned to see Ravi run up and clasp Draegan’s hand. Pulling on his arm. Leading him into the room. His blue eyes flickered up to find Iris and Kylo.

“I don’t know if I should intrude on such a valuable lesson.” Draegan says with a smile, but he takes small steps where Ravi leads him. He’d never want to disappoint the boy, after all. His favourite student.

Iris likes the colour of Draegan’s coat today. He always dressed so handsomely and today is no exception.

The shade lingers somewhere between ruby red and saffron orange. Thick brocade silk stitched into the familiar style of long thigh length tunic he always wore. A plunging neckline down to his milky collarbone.

He wore black high breeches and charcoal grey suede boots. The cut of his clothing tucked his frame into long slender shapes. He had one of his large velvet coats swathing his figure. Draping his chest. It’s the colour of scarlet blood mottled with gold thread. The handsome coat sweeps along behind his ankles. Frames the strong columns of his thighs as he walks. He rests the hand which held the boom against his thigh. Iris followed where his hand lay. Admiring the leanness of his legs.

She darts her eyes away before her cheeks redden. Before she gets caught blushing.

“We’re learning swords and sword fighting.” Ravi tells Draegan. Pulling him like an overeager puppy tugging on its lead. Trailing him to the sword table.

“So I can see-“ Draegan answers. His eyes turning from the table and briefly skimming up Kylo’s back. A long basket hilted sword hanging down from his right arm. It’s been a long time since he saw Kylo with a sword to hand. It takes him back to the root of their memories together. Catches in his chest like a churning storm. He swallows and tears his eyes away to look at the table.

“I think you’ll recognise a few of those blades.” Kylo smiles nicely across at Draegan. For the first time. He speaks evenly to him. There’s no lingering comments or sharp barbs hidden in his words. He’s finally speaking to him as an equal.

They watch as Draegan smiles and moves across to a particular blade. Kylo knew exactly which one. His favourite. Always had been since they knew each other. Tapered, curved, thin, deadly and savage when in his hands. Not that he ever needed a sword to hurt people. His old Scimitar. The silver one bound with grey leather at the grip. The long and angular cross guard.

“Is that your sword?” Ravi asks the tall demon. Wide eyed and fascinated as he usually was by Draegan’s presence. A fountain of questions and searching for knowledge. And Draegan certainly had a lot to give.

He sets the book down by the sword and runs his fingers along the weapon.

“Is it yours?” Ravi asks. A curious fingertip on his little hand reaching out to skim the ornate scabbard it sat in.

“It was.” Draegan says. “A lifetime ago.” He adds mournfully.

That makes Iris’ heart throb mournfully for Draegan. That swirling air of sadness cloaked him once again.

“Will you show me how to use it?” Ravi asks, beaming up at his pale mentor.

A wicked idea lives behind Draegan’s gleaming eyes. His smirk curls. That devilish thing that was a source of all ruin- desolated hearts and dark horrors have seen that smirk and longed for it.

“How about I demonstrate its use for you my dear?” Draegan says. His hands leave his weapon and everyone watches as he shrugs his coat off his arms and lays it on the table neatly.

He grasps the sword and lifts it from the table. It feels right in his hand again. Growing back into the muscle memory of his touch. Iris watches the sun gleam violently off the blade as he unsheathes it. A slow shrill trickle of metal fills the air as he does. He steps away from Ravi and spins the blade in his hand. Letting it fall and twist natural over his fingers from the intricate curves of the silver and gold basket handle.

“Lord Ren.” Draegan says as he walks across to stand opposite him. Sword sown by his thigh. “I challenge you to a duel.” He insists wickedly. A playful smile on his lips.

Jomar, who is seated next to Iris, shares a look with her Ladyship. “Should those two be around each other armed? Or am I paranoid?” He leans over and asks worriedly.

Iris swallows and looks at both big men squaring up to each other. Her mouth gapes.

“From what I can glean about both of them, they don’t need swords to cause damage-“ She says back nervously.

“So should I call for a priest or a doctor?” Jomar asks quietly. Iris hopes he’s joking. She gives Jomar a sharp look full of concern.

Kylo steps forwards slowly and smiles at Draegan’s proposition. A cunning smile starting to curl up one side of his mouth. “I accept your dare, Verros.”

“Just so you’re aware. I’ve no issue with crossing a blade with you. No matter how rusty and- out of practice you are.” Kylo warns. Both men draw the swords out their scabbards. Unleashed the biting metal within.

Jomar’s brows raise. Ravi laughs as he comes across to sit with Iris. He wedges himself onto the seat next to her. She holds his hand. He grips it back tight.

“I urge you to bite your tongue.” Draegan counters. “What is to be the winners prize?” He asks.

“To the victor? I suggest... a celebratory medieval feast for dinner tonight. Held in their honour.”

“Oh, cook will love that, at this short notice.” Jomar comments drily.

“For that outburst? You can be the court jester in the dangly hat with bells on.” Kylo snaps across to his Butler. Pointing his sword at Jomar.

“Don’t point that thing at me.” Jomar cautions.

Draegan laughs at their exchange.

“Ravi was asking me only yesterday about medieval kings and queens. A worthy challenge with a worthwhile cause. I acquiesce to the terms.” Draegan accepts graciously.

“Good-“ Kylo beams. Arcing his sword in a violent sudden arc through the air.

He moves so suddenly to attack Draegan, it draws a gasp from both Iris and Ravi.

Jomar mutters a prayer under his breath in Hindi.

Draegan counters so ably it makes Iris’s jaw drop fully open. Raising his arm up to block Kylo’s blow. Pushing him back and away. Clashing metal rings in the air. Iris is enchanted with the way he moves. He always glides so smoothly it’s impossible to think of the demon as anything other than elegance and poise. The way he fights is no different.

“That was an easy shot.” Kylo countered gruffly. Draegan struck slyly from the left side. Kylo caught it. Blocked. They parried and stepped back.

The tall blonde raises a wry brow at his dark competitor. Kylo tries to knock his sword arm upwards and swiftly undercut him to land a blow on his middle. Draegan blocks from overhead. Slanting his body back to throw Kylo off his momentum.

Kylo gives Draegan a cunning smile. Eyes warm and the tension between them is laying in their stomachs like excitement and anticipation. “You’re too predictable you know-“ Kylo comments.

Draegan says nothing. He counters a smug smile with a quick attack. Swords clash furiously. They edge back and forth, blocking and attacking. So fast and vicious. These men were warriors. That is apparent there. Iris can see their familiarity and repartee in every hit. Every twist of the arm and each competing smirk.

Draegan is starting to win. He’s so sly and he’s getting more hits in that Kylo can block. Kylo stumbles back and tries to keep pace. Now he’s snarling and grunting and Draegan is fast gaining the upper hand.

Ravi squeezes Iris’s hand suddenly so tight. She tears her eyes away from the heady sight to see the boys doe eyed stare looking up at him. Cocoa eyes shining wet and afraid. He looks to her for clarity.

“Will Draegan hurt Kylo?” He asks in a very wary little voice. They weren’t fighting in a playful way anymore. This was a battle now. She hopes it doesn’t end in blood.

She opens her mouth and looks back at them. The flash of Draegans blue eyes turn in their direction. Purposefully so. He heard what Ravi said. He hears his and Iris’s worry- he’s distracted.

Kylo strikes.

He knocks one of Draegan’s strong legs out the way sending him momentarily falling. His sword clatters out his arm and he’s knocked onto one knee. Facing away from Kylo. But he twists his head back to look up at the vampire who’d put him there.

They are panting. Sharing a look with each other that spoke of more than common revelry. Sweat sheens lightly on Kylo’s brow from the exertion. The contact of them strangled the air. Crackles like the air compressed and sparking hot before thunder and lightning strikes.

Draegan hasn’t even worked up a drip of sweat but his chest heaves and his Cupid’s bow lips part as he looks up at the dark man towering over him. Sword pointed to his shoulder. Halfway to almost slicing into his pale neck.

Draegan comes back to earth first. He shows Kylo his empty hands and raises his palms up. Smiles a laugh. “I am vanquished.” He says.

Ravi, with a worried frown pulling down his brows. Runs full pelt to Draegan. Stands close to him. “Are you hurt?” He asks. Looking down at Draegan like he bore a terrible wound.

“Wounded in vanity only. My dear.” Draegan insists. Reaching out a hand to take Ravi’s shoulder. Blue gaze piercing kindly into the boy who showed such concern for his friend. Draegan says something soothing to him in Hindi. Iris watches how Draegan’s entire pale hand dwarfs the entire socket of the boys shoulder. Silver rings wink at her in the light. He comes back to his willowy full height.

Kylo removed his sword from Draegan’s neck when Ravi came over. “Feast. In my honour. Naturally. I think I shall be a gallant knight of the very highest honour and serving at the pleasure of the King.” He smirks.

“Really darling? Do gloat more-“ Iris japes at him. Pressing her hands to her knees and standing. Draegan rises to his feet. Picking up his sword and taking it back to the table.

“I hope you enjoy your spoils.” He says to Kylo as he passes him by.

Jomar comes to relive Kylo of his weapon. “If you’ve scratched that, I will run you through with it.” He warns as he takes it back to the table.

“Jester.” Kylo’s points a finger at the man. He simply rolls his eyes in response.

Kylo catches his wife’s hand as she comes close. “And as the most beautiful lady of the court. You must go on put on your finest silks and chiffons for our feast tonight.” Kylo insists. Keeping a hold of her hand and twirling her in a circle. Smiling happily at her as her skirts spin and so do the downy little hairs falling down at the nape of her neck. She laughs at his antics.

“So long as I don’t get married off to some foreign prince merely for political gain-“ Iris jokes. Draegan smiles as he turns back to all of them.

“Naturally my darling. I want to secure an alliance with the Spanish.” He parried with her. Draegan watches how she laughs. It lifts him to hear the sound of her laughter.

“What is Draegan?” Ravi asks Kylo. Handing back his still sheathed little dagger. It was a glorified letter opener really.

“Hmm” Kylo thinks. Before looking up at the pale demon in question. “A trusted advisor. He does have years upon years of experience in that area.” Kylo insists.

Draegan smiles. “Always pleased to serve a merciful ruler.”

“Who will be our king be I wonder?” Draegan asks.

They all three look down at a smiling Ravi.

“I need to seek for a small-ish crown and a cape it seems-“ Kylo smiles. “Tonight we dine like its 1586.”

“Ahh, a seminal year.” Draegan smirks. Kylo laughs.

Iris loves the fact that they mostly aren’t even joking.

~

  
  
  
  



	31. Sanguinary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes- oh yes- this goes into every trope ridden place a vampire fic usually goes. Am I going to apologise for it? No. No I am not. Quick TW though; period blood and vampires- you do the math darlings- if blood or roughness upsets you, you may wish to skip this here chap. Things get a little- predatory 👀❣️💉

  
  


  
  


Kylo’s rest took him slow and deep. Something reminiscent of tar or black treacle. Thick, syrupy and dark. Though he’d welcome that crushing vale of blackness as opposed to any fevered dream that his mind could conjure up. All the places he’s seen in all the ages he’s lived. Times of peace or war. His head seemed to regurgitate them at random, at its own behest.

Though something pulled him sharply out of his sleep. As his senses stirred to life, he feels his chest quake and burn with something fevered. It feels like a sort of madness setting in his spine. Creeping along every bone of him. Sinking deep.

And that something is sweet, metallic, and blazing hot.

Blood. He can smell a lot of warm, viscid, blood-

_Iris_.

Rest can’t hold him back now. His eyes slam open and every cell in his body violently shakes off the sleep he’d been trapped in.

His head lifts from his pillow like a startled animal. He twists around and looks behind him. The covers falling over his naked waist.

His eyes adjust quick to the light. Snapping from brown to gold in a flash like a candle flame. He blinks at the shape of his wife huddled opposite him. In her nightgown. Curled away from him with her arms around her stomach.

Kylo looms over the mattress and his large cold hands move to press into her back. She mumbles something incoherent at him. He settles onto his knees behind her. The scent of blood blooming stronger in his nose. His hands worriedly press over her.

“Iris?” He asks. Frown pulling down his dark brows. He reaches up and pulls a lock of hair back from her forehead. She’s dewy and warm. He can see the sheen of sweat on her forehead in the half dark of their room.

She opens her eyes and turns back at him. Looking groggy. Pain etched into her face. And her hands are guarding her stomach- wrapped around herself. Knees pulled up.

“Oh, dove-“ He realises. Her monthly courses. She was hurting.

“I’m well. Just-“ She winces as a roll of pain squeezed at her lower stomach. Clenching tight. He can see one of her hands fisting into her nightgown. Knuckles white on the crumpled linen.

He strokes the hair out her face. She sighs at the touch of his cool fingers. They felt like bliss on her skin - as they always did.

It didn’t stop the way he could smell her blood. Curling temptation onto his hungry tongue. Burning sluggish with the scent of her. Cloying and preying on his tastebuds.

It gouged into his stomach like he’d been fiercely kicked by Erland. Knocked him sideways to detect it, and unable to help her when she was in such pain.

He has to leave the bloodthirsty animal aside and remember to be the gallant husband. The one thing he can seldom stand- for her to be in pain which he is helpless to take away.

She woke up an hour ago with that horrid sharp flare stabbing in between her hips and that certain stickiness smearing and staining the insides of her thighs.

She had silently padded to the bathing chamber, cleaned off with a rag and the tepid soapy water left in the jug and basin from washing her face the night before. She soaked the rag and sought out her bundle of clean cotton rags she kept handy for times like these. She crept back to bed and tried to resume sleep before the cramps kicked in.

“Can I get you something? Anything for the pain?” He asks. But truly he is ill-equipt to know what she might need during this time. He leans over her and holds the hip closest to him.

“Rose is drawing me a bath. She says she has a remedy for a woman’s monthly aches.” Iris insists. Gently shutting her eyes and resting back on the pillow. Turning onto her back.

He catches a flash of her upper leg. Unknowingly she teases him with the sight of that soft plain of desire.

She parts her legs and lies back. Hips flat to the mattress and the sheets she’d kicked off. She’s just resettling and getting comfortable- but when she opens her thighs and moves, her scent blooms in the air like the most ripe punchy red flower unfolding for the sun.

His mind longs to turn to anything else, but the wretched thing drags him into a place he can’t go. Glistening black rubies shining in candle light. The pulse of a vein in a throbbing corded neck. Spices and sweat before the puncture of his teeth and the flood of sanguine relief. Red wine bouquet of velvet and salt and red roses, and his throats as dry as a channel of sand and-

_God_. She smells divine. Ambrosia. Heaven. A place too good for an animal like him to ever be.

Kylo bites his tongue. His gums ache. Stinging like nothing he’s ever felt before. He feels his fangs begging to push down into his mouth. Bursting out of him like this dark eye of a storm thats happening in his chest.

His tongue lays like dry cotton in his mouth. Furring his speech. He swallows down a breath as it fumbled into a shuddering growl. He’s served a macabre reminder that he hadn’t fed in a long while.

It’s his turn to grip the covers tight with white knuckles. Hunger running headlong into his bones. Burning his blood like he’s bathing in sharp bitter vinegar. He grabs the feral carnivore in his blood and hauls it out by the scruff of its neck.

He lets the flare of red in his predator vision sink away.

He lays down beside her. Up onto one elbow and looks down over her. Through the sweat and the blood. His mind clears a path. Today she seems more drawn than usual. Her face looks gaunt and theres dark bags under her eyes that attest to her illness. Draining her of energy and spirit.

“What things have you got to attend to today?” She seeks. Knowing he’d have his usual rota of meetings, paperwork and possible tenant visits.

He tilts his head and hums in thought for a second.

“Nothing of note.” He smiles kindly. Fingers sweeping a gentle touch over her temple and down her cheekbone. Her sweat sinking into his fingertips. He made his scent focus on that rather than the other tempting things he could smell.

“Don’t jest with me. You can’t cancel your day for me. Not for this.” She says in a stern tone.

“I think, I may do whatever I wish. Who would dare stop me-“ He asks.

“Jomar.” Iris points out.

“I can take him. He’s all bite and sass and no bark.” Kylo growls with a clever smile.

“I can’t say anything to change your mind can I?” She asks.

“You can try but I’d suggest putting your energy towards getting in that bath. And I’ll bring you something to eat. Any preferences?” He asks.

She smiles. Eyes hooded and lazy. Bright and grey in the half dark. “Just tea.” She insists.

Kylo leans over slowly and presses his lips to hers. He doesn’t care about the sour taste of stale sleep on her lips and her breath. If anything, he takes it as a distraction. Let’s it take him.

He softly kisses her. Big hand cupping the side of her face. Bringing her close to deepen the kiss. His lush lips spreading hers open and pouring in love. Letting her feel the numbing influence of his kiss. Hoping in some tiny way that it helps.

He pulls back. And nuzzles the tip of his sweaty nose into hers. Sharing the dew of their sleep. She sinks her eyes into his gaze and thanks him. For writing off his day in under a minute to help take care of her.

A polite scuffle rattles across the door and it creaks open, crept open from a gentle hand the other side. They don’t come in and catch a glimpse.

Rose has been burned enough by coming unannounced into this room before. She merely speaks into the gap. Let’s her voice carry across to the bed. “Your bath is ready My Lady.”

Kylo can smell the heat of the steamy water. And carried with it is green and bitter herbs and things he can’t place.

“She’s a gem isn’t she?” Kylo asks his wife. He hadn’t moved from his place of being on top of her. Covering her in kisses.

“She is.” Iris answers him.

“Thank you Rose.” She calls out lovingly.

The door slides shut, rasping across the floor and back into its place in the latch and they are alone again. Iris turns on her side and slides out from under her husband after pressing a kiss to his stubbled cheek. Bristles tear like black barbs at her soft lips.

She sits up on the edge of the bed and He sees her stoop as she sits there. Spine slumped under the weight of her hurting. She presses a hand to her lower back and tilts her head toward the ceiling. Kylo watches the light from the window spill through her gown. Milky white space bordering the shadow of her body. She stands and goes for the window. Opens the curtains and an overcast day drizzling with rain awaits her.

Mist circled eerily through the forest. Swamping the wet tree trunks like white foggy soup. Out of that ivory swirling broth stands pine trees dotted in rain. She knows the air in that wood today would be close and cold. Cold enough to send a slithering child along her spine. Rich Bavarian mud, wet herby pine and the rain haunting the clear air. Pure scent of the forest lingers at every window. Sneaks in under very ledge.

Even the mountains in the near distance are hidden behind a blurred sheet of drizzling rain. Soft and insistent it falls from a chunky chowder sky. Every single weather element here seemed so soft and untouchable in this fortress of a castle. It took a lot of temper from nature to scratch up the thick white castle walls. It makes Iris feel safe.

She stands at the window and lets her hands drift down from the thick scarlet curtains. When she turns around she sees her husband had slipped out of bed and was just pulling some clothes on. She caught a brief glimpse of his buttocks before he slipped black breeches up his legs. His braces from yesterday hanging down over his hips. His feet are bare and he takes a rumpled shirt and lifts it back over his shoulders. Brushes it down over his torso.

She looks at the savage clawed pink of the wolf scar slashed down his shoulder before his falling shirt tails cascade down his back. Covering every mole and scar and freckle. From the day she first saw him minus his clothes, he looked just as savage in them, as he did out of them. And something about the cut of his strong back makes her feel particularly enamoured with him.

He turns and watches Iris walking across to join him. Feet rasping across the cold floors. He guards his temper carefully. Where she walks and moves it’s only adding more temptation.

He raises his eyes up and smiles as he opens the bath chamber door for her. Walking into the modest room, she’s struck with the heavenly wall of heat and flowers that engulfs her.

Kylo’s bathing chamber was a large room, and as draped in lush red paint and dark wainscoting as his bed chamber. The ceiling was low and white and gave the illusion of space. It had smaller arched windows letting in meagre light than the bedroom balcony and windows.

It usually smelled in here like the bath salts Kylo had his valet use. Eucalyptus bath salts and pine. And the peppermint spice of his soap that lived in the hollows of his neck and the dips in his chest. His bramble cologne melded well with the greenery of the soap he uses. Darkly opulent just like he is. She loves how those scents beat off his chest when she lays her head on his ribs at night.

A huge stone fireplace ran almost the length of one wall by the entrance. It’s lit now and logs burn to ash in its centre. Warming the narrow room. The walls along the side are longer, and the other end had a large low walnut dresser stuffed with soaps, linens, towels and everything needed for bathing.

On the dresser top, the wash jug and basin she’d used earlier was now clean and empty. It stood opposite a large gilded ornate mirror. A round shard of silver glimmering on the blood red wall.

In the centre of the room a large claw foot porcelain tub stood allocated in its mighty place. Cold, white and cradling a lovely warm lap of water. Iris smiles seeing all the various herbs and flowers Rose has generously applied to the water for her. To soothe and drive away her aches and pains. She’d even hung up fresh new linens and nightgown on the pegs by the dresser, and left out some more clean kerchiefs for Iris on the top.

“I believe my darling maid is worth her weight in gold.” Iris sighs as she comes into the room and see all the touches she’d left out. She could see dried flowers and sliced roots of some description bobbing around in the piping hot bath water. Rose oil for a little scent. Tumeric root, slices of dried orange and dried camomile flowers.

Kylo chuckles. He comes up behind her and carefully places his hands on her shoulders. Pressing a kiss into her hair. Her perfume ebbs into his nose and he’s awfully glad it’s the only thing he focuses on.

“Let’s get you situated and then I will go on a quest for tea.” He assures his little dove.

“Turn around whilst I get in-“ Iris asks. Demurely slipping off her sweat sodden nightgown. Luckily she hadn’t bleed through. And today she’d be requiring a thicker petticoat to ensure she didn’t.

“I won’t look-“ Kylo lies. Of course she felt tender about undressing before him in her current state. This time of the month was not something women discussed in front of men. Let alone let their husbands see said area in question during their menses.

“But Iris, my sweet darling, you know I won’t mind seeing any part of you. No matter what state you’re in.” He kisses her head again and turns away. He gives her some privacy. Less he’s tempted to pounce.

Iris smiles lightly and groans as she moves to slip her gown over her head, grabs a snip of muslin from the dresser and ties her hair back. She only washed it yesterday it seems like too much work for her aching back to sit combing and drying it through again today.

She folds the gown nicely on the dresser and walks back to the bath. Smiling at how Kylo stood with a hand clasped across his eyes. Letting her see how much he wasn’t looking.

She didn’t see him turn over his shoulder and sneak a glance as she patiently folded her nightgown up into a bundle.

He looks back to the wall and listens as she gets into her bath. The slosh of water and her hiss as the heat stings at her skin.

He waits until he’s sure she’s sunk under the surface. And then he turns his head. The cloud of soap and oils cleverly concealed her nakedness from his sight.

He walks around the bath and crouches beside her. Dangling his elbows to rest on the edge. Thankful that the scent of her blood that tantalised him was smothered by the water and the herbs. Strangled by soap and greenery and kept her safe out the clutches of his depraved hunger.

“Does that feel better?” He asks. Swirling his fingers in the water. Teasing ripples at the surface and disturbing the herbs and flowers.

She hums her answer of ‘ _absolutely_ ’ and lays her head back against the cradle of the bath. Kylo rolls his sleeves and moves the small wooden stool beside the bath that she often perched a cup of tea on. He sat on it and continued to roll his sleeves.

He warmed his hands in the water for a second, and then slid his big wet hands down her spine. Tracing a firm massage along her back. She sighed in bliss. Body arching forwards as his hands worked sinful magic on her aching bones.

“Good?” He asks. Her response is a blissful sigh half bred with a long moan.

“Nice isn’t the word for it.” Iris says thankfully. One wet hand of hers emerges from the water. Dripping. She holds his wrist and leans around to kiss his slightly cooler forearm.

When his hands slip lower, massaging her lower back. She’s practically limp in his arms. Head thudding back against the cradle of the bath. She winces so slightly at the pressure of his strong fingers but it ultimately chases that niggling ache away.

“Where have you been all these years of my life?” Iris asks.

She always suffered cruelly with back ache when her time of the month came around. It was not a helpful inducement to her mothers match making desires. Iris’ pains were often so crippling and debilitating she was left bed bound. And forever terrified in fear of bleeding through her cloth onto a new set of petticoats or a gown. Facing the wrath of her mother if that did happen.

Kylo chuckles. A warm sound that warms her up just like this bath full of water. “Trust me. I’m not done with you yet. I’m not stopping my ministrations til you’re a thoroughly relaxed puddle, dove.” He promises.

Iris lets herself go into his touch. The way he knowingly worked and kneaded her back. He had such wonderful magic in his hands. He massages her into a perfect trance. Heat and bliss seeping into her.

She shuts her eyes and lets his hands wander wherever they wish. His mouth lowers to her ear as his big palms slip up over her shoulders, down across her neck and over her breastbone. Dipping below the level of the water. Plunging in and disturbing the dried flowers that bobbed there. When he cups her breasts, one in each hand, she shudders. He gently moves his fingers.

“Not sore are you?” He seeks. Gently caressing her nipples with the flat of each palm. She hums her answer.

“I’m not.” She answers breathily. One hand of hers curling around his forearm again. She arched her back for him.

“Let me try something which I think might help-“ Kylo’s grinning. She can hear it in his voice. He moves further down the bath. Crouches by her hip. Runs his blazing hot fingers down from her knee, to her thigh. She shifts her thighs open for him.

A shudder of pleasure crawls along his spine. It’s just _her_ in the air. All he can taste and smell. Her warm body, her skin.

Iris gasps a sudden laugh when she feels his hot fingers slither up and find her sex.

Also because he then joins her in the bath. Kneeling near her feet. Still fully clothed. Pressing her legs apart and covering her with his hand - uncaring for the fact she was wearing a wadded cotton rag. It stopped the water being so bloody after all.

She opens her eyes and looks at her big vampire. His shirt pasted transparent and sticky wet up to his hips. His breeches and legs completely dark and submerged underwater. His smirk was lethal and beguiling. Flowers and herbs sticking to his arms and skin and floating around his hips. He looked somehow ridiculous and bewitchingly masculine all at once.

She wants to sigh and chuckle his name but she’s more focused on the way his fingers move and find her clit in the water. Such deft movements. He was well practiced at that manoeuvre by now. Her legs are now arched up to press to both sides of the bath. Giving him more room to do that wicked delightful thing with his fingers.

He loves how warm she is. Blazing hot and slick wet. Perfectly lush and swollen as he dips his fingers between her legs. Only focusing on that taut little clit of hers. Softly swirling it under his thumb. Massaging it and slipping his other fingers all over her folds. To places he knew would feel so sublime.

She’s too focused on the pleasure to worry about Kylo seeing blood, or the taboo methods of feminine hygiene she took precautions for during this time. She didn’t care about anything when he got his hands on her. He has stunning dark magic in his touch after all.

Kylo smirks gently at her. Eyes flecked gold as he watches her writhe under his fingers. Water and flowers slapping everywhere. Especially when he crawls up the bath and positions his big sopping body over her. Dried flowers and herbs clinging to his shirt as he drips onto her.

He encourages her to curl her legs over the back of his. His hips hovering above hers where he rests between her legs. Gets her arms to wrap around his neck as he nestled his lips into the crook of hers. Kissing and sucking the taste of salt sweat and flowers away. Maybe he shouldn’t be this close at such a dangerous time- but he can’t help it. He licks over her pulse and his eyes roll back in his head.

He was a moth to a tapering flickering candle. A bee drawn to the thick drip, of a flower cup cradling honey-pollen. He can smell how her blood dances and rushes around under her skin. He can almost taste her, he wants her so much.

He’s agonised over the taste of her so many times; Turkish roses, salt and something sweet, like fat peaches left to ripen in the sun. He knew she’d taste like bliss and something akin to nectar dripping down his chin.

He’s playing a dangerous game. Being this close when she’s weakened and in pain. The ultimate prey to this earths ultimate predator.

His fingers move quicker and rougher, water slapping around his wrist, as he brings her closer and closer to climax. She reaches up behind her and hooks her hand to the lip of the bath. He doesn’t care if water slaps over the side of it now. Staining the floor. There’s a mania to his touch. He wants to feel the pleasure singing through her veins. He hunts her orgasm down like the animal he is.

She clings onto him as he covers her, her back arched, thrusting her breasts into his chest. Her other hand digging into his wet shoulder. Her moans shattering and breaking in her throat like glass. Clenching onto him so tight as he pulled her over the brink of pleasure and took her sailing into the valley beyond.

Her hips undulate as she matches the rhythms of his fingers to coax out every maddening and obliterating crux of pleasure. A rich explosion of sensation. Fierce darts of pleasure shimmering through her. Her body fully relaxed back into the cradle of the bath. Supine. Limp. Listless.

Kylo digs a hand under her back, brings her dripping front to crush to his chest and holds her as the pleasure slips away. Bursting through her veins like sweet ripe fruit coming into bloom. He lets his other hand slip away from her puffy, swollen sex. So flushed with blood and aroused, he could almost feel how she clamped his fingers so tight she didn’t want to pull away.

“Better now?” He asks. Smirking down at her all pleased and devilish. Running his lips along her ear and behind it. Sucking kisses and soapy water from her skin. She smells like roses and bliss.

She groans. She can’t deny it. Little arrowheads of pleasure distract her from the pinching cramps atleast. She was so mellowed, he could pour her out this bath if he needed to.

“Much-“ She sighs. He likes the sight of her cheeks and her neck all rosy pink. Heated cherry pink blossomed so sweet on her cheeks.

He kisses a path down her neck to her collarbone. Adoring how dried yellow petals stick to her skin. Camomile flowers. He nuzzled his nose into the syrupy slow pulse in her neck. Listens to it. Closes his eyes and savours it. Holds her close to him.

They slowly melt into peace. The two of them. Sandwiched together so tight. Kylo puts himself to use eventually. Ensuring she isn’t so supine as to slip into the water and drown.

He sits her up as he lathers her oat and lavender soap between his big hands and passes his palms over every inch of her body. Dipping her into the water to rinse it away afterward. He helps clean every spot he can reach.

When he’s done he helps her up out the water and wraps her up in a towel. Patiently plucks the dried petals off her skin and assists in rubbing her dry. He lets her attend to putting on a clean nightgown and another linen cloth. It’s a thick smooth cloth, her gown. Worn and cosy and he likes that she’s wrapping up in comfort.

He even helps comb out her hair as she sits at her vanity table. Very gently and wary of tugging knots in it and hurting her. She puts a drip of perfume on her neck and wrists and he resettled her in bed. The fire had been laid whilst they were in the bath. The bed re-pressed and now Kylo strides back across to it and pulls back the covers her side.

“Back in you get-“ He orders. Nodding his head. Sharply ordering her with a genteel smile on his lips. Playful command lingering in his eyes.

Iris stands. Wincing at the new cramp she suspects is brewing in her abdomen. When she walks across to him he holds her hand and helps her slide into their bed. The new sheets feel insanely crisp and fresh gliding onto her bare legs. She settles in and he tucks her in.

“Breakfast coming up. You are allowed books and sketching implements only.” He tells her. Leaning over and bracing both palms flat on the bed by her hips.

“You’re very authoritative today.” Iris tells him. Smothering back a yawn as she smoothed out wrinkles in the sheets pooled around her waist. Hands clasped in front of her.

“I commanded an army back in the day. Keeping you in bed shouldn’t prove much of a challenge for me.” He smirks. Quirking one brow.

“I promise to be less trouble than a military campaign.” She smiles sweetly. Leaning across and cupping his cheek as she kissed the one opposite. He smelled like her bath too. Dried petals and herbs and her soap living on his skin. He’d slipped away and redressed in a new dry pair of breeches and a shirt as she dressed.

Black breeches, black boots and a white shirt. Today’s waistcoat is a crimson brocade silk. Swirled with velvet paisley flowers. Blooming across his front like deep dark blood stains.

“Less trouble and certainly a better use of my time.” He offers with a sweet kiss to her temple. Padding out the room and going down to the kitchens himself to ensure she gets fed.

He fills the kitchen doorway and slips through, ducking his head so he very narrowly missed slamming his skull into the low medieval doorcase. His boots clack harshly on the tiles as he enters the busy room. Always busy.

The kitchen maids along the side counters attending to whatever strict order McTavish barked at them. A couple around the large central table island with the frightening woman herself. Rolling dough or chopping meat and dicing vegetables. The usual fare. Divine smell of homely cooking lingers in the air. Baking bread and something that he suspects might be a chicken stew, with fennel and saffron bubbles away on stove.

Jomar is in his usual spot of a morning. Enjoying a cup of his usual Moroccan chai tea. Cinnamon, black chai and ginger cloves swirls around the man where he sits in his pumpkin orange red dastar and navy blue coat. Sipping his tea in a dainty china cup. Legs crossed relaxing, with the fat lump that was Clarence the kitchen cat purring at his feet.

He did like to play favourites, that feline. Jomar won every time. Mainly cause the Butler usually snuck him an anchovy, or some cooked ham when cooks head was turned.

“Morning.” Kylo calls to all his kitchen staff Lumbering over to where Jomar sits reclining. Paper open in one hand as he sips his drink with the other.

“Hard day is it?” He asks his Butler in cheek. Dodging a scurrying housemaid who swept by him carrying a heavy iron pot that looked far too heavy for the waify slim girl. She managed the task in a scarily efficient way. He’d never dare cross one of the kitchen maids.

For one, they were trained to be able to break down a carcass in under a minute. Secondly, no matter how beastly he is, McTavish is a whole other very Scottish and very violent level of terrifying.

“Oh, _you_.” Jomar sighs. Folding up his paper and sighing.

“There goes a peaceful morning. The great noise is awake.” He smiles sweetly. It bunches his cheeks and creases his eyes. His crows feet crumpled by his butterscotch eyes. Made honey-lemon in the overcast light beaming into the space.

“What are you doing in my kitchen?” McTavish suddenly frowns across to Kylo. Shouting over the din of clanking pots and chopping knives slicing onto wooden boards. Poison ivy green of her hazel glare piercing in his direction.

Kylo glances around himself. When seeing no culprit discernible or deserving of her shouts. He points into his chest. “Sorry, was that aimed at me?” He blinks coquettishly.

Jomar laughs. This may have been Kylo’s castle and land but, it was _her_ kitchen.

“Why are you down here? What do you want?” She grumps at him. One hand on the counter before her. The other holding a cloth by the back of her hip. A cloth strong enough to choke a man.

“Only a glimpse at your tender caring face and sweet smile, McTavish.” Kylo tries to charm her. Safe to say it doesn’t work- not on her. She raised a brow and Kylo knew he was in the deepest trouble.

“Iris is under the weather. I came down for a tray of tea and something- anything, sweet you can give me.” He offers as his explanation.

McTavish seems to soften at the mere mention of his wife. “Oh aye. Does she need any herbal remedies?” Cook asks him.

Kylo sways closer to his darling Mrs McTavish and comments lowly. “It’s a very delicate time of the month, so you understand.” With meaning and intent on his face.

McTavish nods. “Poor chick. She’ll he needing hot chocolate.” She predicts. Bustling away to get a cup.

“Maybe something for pain if she wants it.” Kylo adds.

“Finally not able to stomach you, is she?” Jomar jokes. Kylo side eyes him and says naught.

“Much more out of you, and I’ll find some way to kill you using this- and only this. And I’ll make it slow.” Kylo’s threatening. Holding up a small teaspoon.

Jomar turns back to his paper. Nonplussed. “You’ll have to catch me first.” Kylo throws the spoon at his knee.

Cook cleverly sweeps a tray onto the table and begins to set up the contents on the modest walnut tray. Two silver teapots, one filled with tea, one with hot cocoa. A plate of ginger biscuits - cook said ginger helped during these delicate womanly times. A healthy vastly handy herb and it was good at killing pain too. She also sets a giant wedge of cake on a plate for her Ladyship as well as two slices of English rarebit - red wine brushed bread, toasted with cheese on top. Something cheering, McTavish insisted.

Kylo hauled the tray into his hands when he was done. Thanking her graciously and all the kitchen helpers. Jomar makes a passing retort about Kylo carrying a tray himself with his own two hands as he slides out the room. Kylo reserves aside a thought to throw something else at him later for that. Something sharper.

He makes his way upstairs. Clutching the tray that others would’ve called heavy, with such ease. He nudged open their bedroom door with a swift artless kick of his foot. He comes into their big scarlet bedroom. A full sky of grey let’s in little light. Rain drizzles and mists the air and the fire gives a comforting bright glow to the room. Washing amber over the figure of his wife. In the middle of their huge bed. Pooled in crimson and white sheets.

His face pulls into a frown when he sees Iris slumped on the pillows in their bed. Curled up in the foetal position he woke up to her being in. He felt powerless to help.

He shuts the door with the back of his foot and comes across to her side of the bed.

She opens her eyes and smiles thankfully up at him, hands clutching her stomach. He could see her massaging low over her belly over her nightgown. He sets the tray down and takes a seat beside her hip, rubbing his big hand along her thigh.

“I wish I could help you more, dove. Hurts me to see you suffering like this.” He speaks with sympathy.

He’s got ten centuries worth of blood on his hands. He’s killed and slaughtered and here he is driven to sadness at seeing her suffering. He doesn’t delve too deep into the irony of that thought.

Iris laughs bitterly. Turning and nudging her head into his pillow. The smell of sharp brambles and juicy dark blackberries of his cologne comforts her just being near it.

“Be so good as to take up any complaints with my womb.” Iris says plainly.

“I’ll be sure to write it a very strongly worded letter.” Kylo frowns seriously. But a second later a playful smile tugs at his lips. He runs his hand along her lower back. Feeling where the pinching pain in her body was emanating from.

“I’ve been a terribly good hunter gatherer. I come bearing tea, chocolate, and cake.” He offers. His hand slips to her thighs as she sits up.

“Thank god you weren’t wearing a soldiers uniform when you said that; or you’d be truly irresistible.” Iris jokes as she rights herself.

He frowns moodily as he pours her tea. Sets it down for a minute to scoop a hand around the hip furthest away from him. He yanks her close.

“I am irresistible.” He growls. Kissing the end of her nose. “Now stop being an impertinent wife and drink your tea.” He says as he hands her the dainty saucer. Looking so comically small and fragile in his large warriors hands.

She thanks him for his foraging skills and drinks her tea. She nibbles at the cake but when Kylo frowns at her for leaving half, she eats the whole thing. Shaking the plate at her til it’s gone. Iris tries to tell him she’ll get more plump if she carries on. Kylo’s smirk goes to a dark place. His eyes take on that wicked shade. He rubs his hand over her lower belly where the pain was stemming from. Nestled his lips in her neck. Kissing gently along the crook. Moaning low at the smell of her sweat.

“You know how fond I am of your plumpness.” He insists. She knew. His demonstration this morning was evidence enough of that. He got into the bath with her fully clothed. That’s how fond he is.

They idly pass the time. Chatting and just spending peaceful time with one another. Eventually, the roar of the fire and the miserable dark day leads Iris to fall asleep. She nuzzled up into her husbands chest as he flicked through the novels stacked on her bedside table. The drizzling rain softly pats down the windowpanes and Kylo looks to see the mountains swimming in the white mist of the glum weather. The whole landscape is dark and gloomy.

He passes a couple of hours letting his wife rest. He puts down the book and rests with her after a while. His eyes are blurry when he rouses once again. Mouth furred up even with his light sleep.

He struggles to comprehend what woke him. That feeling from earlier creeps back. A rugged pain spreads through his entire chest. So powerful it felt like it broke every rib. Made his lungs seize up like dry shriveling leaves curling up dead in the autumn.

He feels that urge he should never feel around Iris; the dry tongue that feels as heavy and as cracked as sun baked clay. The way his mind purrs for blood. Makes his gums and his teeth throb in his mouth, pining for something sanguine to wet them. To slip like honey-fire down his throat

He twists his head around and looks down at his sleeping wife. The woman he slept so peacefully beside until now -

In her sleep she’s turned away from being cuddled up to him. Sprawled on her back. Neck twisted to face away from him. Her arm folded upwards onto the pillow beside her face. Palm open. Fingers curled up. So demure. Her other hand folded over her ribs. That wasn’t unusual.

He can smell she’s bleeding heavier now. It’s all he can scent.

Her legs are parted, resting against the covers that she’s kicked away and her nightgown has ridden far up her legs. Almost up past her knees. Into the precarious territory of her soft thighs that he can’t help but adore.

He’s adoring the sight of them far too much as of now.

He wets his lips and his eyes flicker up. She is truly, deeply asleep. Chest rising and falling. He watches her ribs swell in and out. Her pulse fluttering the timpani hum of her frail little life in her neck.

He can see the pulse in her thighs too. Smell the blood rushing under that lily white skin. Paper thin skin. So soft. Delicate.

His mouth waters as he hovers over her. Swings a leg around hers as he runs his fingers up her thigh. Her velvet skin runs so finely under his callused hands. So hot. So _delicious_ -

His lips and his tongue find her femoral artery- he can hear her blood running. Can taste the sweet-hot rush of it. Slipping through her veins smelling better than montmorency wine, and he wanted to gorge and feast until she drips down his chin and onto his chest.

He feels his mouth flood with saliva. Feels how it drips off his tongue and stains onto her leg. His nose nuzzles and sniffs higher and higher and all he can hear is blood- he can see blood. Blood. Blood. He wants it all.

She’s so weak and she’s in pain. It’s so wrong that it so ably calls to the predator in him. Assigns her the role of prey. And she’s let her guard down. Sleeping whilst the hungry beast slumbers beside her.

This beast is awake now- and starving. He hadn’t fed in so long. Weeks, months maybe. It whines it’s torture. It twists his guts and mangles his spine to broken shards.

Just one drop. Maybe just a taste- just one lap of her. Just one.

His pupils pinprick wide, he wants to fill his mouth with her. Nuzzle his nose into the downy hairs above her pussy as he gulps in her taste and her arousal all in one. His two favourite things combined. His wife’s heavenly cunt and her blood along with it.

So close.

His hearing cuts sharp into his ears like mirror shards. She’s thundering in his ears like a rush of water blocking out everything else.

He feels his hand lift her gown. He wets his lips again. So dry. He looks at the ivory apex of her gown and knows he is just millimetres away from tasting her- blood heavy in his nose like copper and roses makes him woozy as he takes a deep inhale. Mouth falling open, gums shrieking in pain-

His eyes spark and his fangs yearn to push down. So close. _So sweet- not far now..._

She winces in pain. Her brow screws up. She feels his breath on her down there, she can sense him above her. Big muscles of him clenched so tight. A wall of cold muscle that smells of bramble cologne. She knows it’s him.

She opens her eyes and all she can see is Kylo’s white shirt and back as he disappears out their bedroom door. Moving fast. So fast. Ripping himself away from temptation.

He forces his feet to move. To stalk him away somewhere else. Anywhere else.

He swallows and curses himself until his fangs recede and his eyes lose their gold coin sheen. His boots rap sharp on the floors like an army drum. His strides are powerful, terse, and soaked in anger.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Rubbing his fingertips into his eyes until pain and popping bursting stars overtook his eyes. He clamped his jaw shut and turned to give the nearest doorcase a good kicking.

The tremor of shame and anger shuddered through him. He felt the wood crack and splinter. He felt the steel heavy of his bones shudder with an explosion of pain as he rammed his fist into the door. So livid with himself for being so thoughtless.

He’d been a hairs breadth away from sinking his teeth into his wife’s thigh and draining several pints of blood out of her. She was as irresistible as anything he’s ever known.

His teeth ache to march back into their bedroom and sink into her. His brain is screaming and throbbing in his head, that he’s starving and denying his hunger.

So be it. He won’t lose to that creature.

A sudden approach of footsteps interrupts Kylo’s raging solitude. He opens his eyes and twists his head back to the doorway beyond. He knew who was there already. The clack of fine boots and the sweep of silk brocade rustling. Jasmine enmeshed with sage.

Draegan fills the doorway like a spill of tall spring.

Today a wheat mustard-gold coat clings delectably to his upper half. Grey breeches and his usual calf skin boots worn well on his long legs. Silver rings slotted on his fingers with the various gems of his wealth. Sapphires, moody grey stones, and engraved silver rings scratched with ancient markings. His hair it’s usual sleekness; pouring down his shoulders and neck like cream.

He holds a saucer and cup of tea on his hands. Kylo can taste the bitter medicinal of it. Swampy green tea. Leaves swimming around in the foggy green. Bitterly herb sharp and muggy in his nose like stagnant water. The only thing that would appeal to his hunger right now, is laying down asleep several rooms away.

Draegan’s piercing eyes find Kylo and rake over him. He tilts his head. Instantly assessing, lingering on the shredded knuckles he ploughed into the doorframe. Possibly denting the gold baroque gilding there.

“Do I need to attend to that?” He calmly nods to Kylo’s mangled hand. Eyes flicking back up to his face. Reading the contention that lives there in his pinched brow. His clenched jaw. Anger beats off Kylo like rain beading off cold hard ice. It always had.

Kylo shakes his head. His rage leaving his senses. Filtering out with every second the source of his bloodlust is removed.

“I’m fine.” Kylo grunts.

“You need to feed. When did you last?” Draegan predicts quietly.

“A week ago.” Kylo answers him. It feels like a cursed year to his hungers greedy mind.

“Iris is bleeding and I can’t- I can’t-“ His voice cracks. Crumbled to ash in his throat. He can’t believe what he’d almost done.

“Go.” Draegan ushers softly. Reaching out and touching his lower arm. “In this state you’re a danger to her so long as she is menstruating. Especially when you haven’t fed yourself. It’s tempting fate, Kylo.”

He sighs. Blinks and slowly shuts his eyes. “Tell her I’m taking a ride out. Don’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t bear for her to know that.” He begs to his oldest friend.

They didn’t know Iris’ ears were straining for sounds at the crack in the open door. Drinking in everything she could.

Draegan shuts his eyes and nods. “Of course. Go.” He urges kindly. Slipping past Kylo holding the cup of tea.

He listens to his Lordships strides flourish fast in the opposite direction as he headed for Kylo and Iris’s chambers.

Iris hears a rattling knock on the door. The clap of metal rings hitting the wood. She groggily sits up and lowers her nightgown where it had ridden up her legs. The sheets crumple and rustle as she rights herself.

Draegan smiles to himself that she’s flustering so with her appearance. Sits herself back on the pillows and folds the covers high up over her waist.

She bids them to enter. Pulling the covers up over herself. Tucking them practically under her armpits. Fussing with her messy sleep scuffed hair as the door crept open. She smiles to see Draegan politely letting himself into the room.

“I hope it’s alright of me to intrude. Only I heard you weren’t well.” He smiles genially as he waits at the door for her command to bid him to enter. She’s learnt that about Draegan. Every manner of his being commands etiquette. He respects the boundaries of others.

“Please. Come in.” Iris smiles at him. Truthfully. She was in need of company. She liked his companionship. He’s so calming, it’s stunning. He can make her feel serene just by seeing his smile. Just talking to him is a tonic to any ill mood.

He enters and shuts the door behind himself. “I brought you some tea if you’d care for it. Raspberry leaf and willow bark. I know a thing or two about healing plants and these should help with the cramps.”

Of course she’s not surprised that he speaks so openly about something she’d have considered a taboo subject back home for english men. Women never spoke of it. It was an unspoken monthly occurrence. Hushed up for men’s comfort. Iris is glad he can stomach talking about her pain and the reasons for it. To her mind, that was true gentlemanly behaviour. Able to face the subject head on.

“That’s very kind. Thank you.” She says with a lot of heart in her words. Her expression very touched by the fact he’d gone to such lengths in odes to her comfort.

He walks around to her bedside. Cup steaming away in his hands, swirling into the air as he moves. Curling herbal heat that she can smell as he gently deposits the cup and saucer on the side within her reach.

“Kylo sends his regrets. He wanted to take a ride out.” He tells her evenly. Disguising the real and very dubious reason.

She likes that he takes the care to spare her feelings with a falsity.

Iris nods. “I understand. He’s got tenants to see I suppose- no matter.” His gentle smile perks her up. “Indulge me, would you- sit with me for a while? Only if you’re not occupied with anything.”

He had twisted half away to walk off and leave her in peace but, this was a much nicer offer. The twinkle of his eyes reflect this.

“I’d be delighted to.” He states proudly.

He brings close one of the red arm chairs by the fire and slants it fairly close to the bed, relaxing into it easily once he settles it in place. Folds one leg over the other and she reaches across to sip the tea he’d so thoughtfully brought her. It was sharp and not very pleasant, she tries not to wince too much sipping it.

Dragean chuckles at her putting on a brave front for him.

“Oh, I assure you it tastes vile but, it will soothe your aches.” He promises her. She smiles, beginning to think he could read her like a book.

She tries not to laugh. Tries not to spit out the tea as she smiles and swallows it down. The minty herb sting of it kissing her throat and he’s right- after a moment, when she lets it thud down her throat. The swampy green taste isn’t as repulsive but, she wouldn’t be crying out for another cup in a hurry.

“At this point I’m willing to try anything that may help. Taste non-withstanding.” She tells him. Holding the saucer and cup in her lap.

Dragean thinks how lovely she looks sat here. Let’s his clear eyes roam over her face. The meagre sun catching in her brown hair. A colour so rich and brown it reminds him of the blazing golden brown tones of autumn. Her hair is mussed and matted from sleep, the dewy pink of rest still sits slightly ruddy on her cheeks. He can smell the blood blooming there in her face.

She makes a simple gauzy nightgown look cosy and beautiful. Even if it’s too big and hints at sliding down over one of her shoulders.

She probably shouldn’t have admitted him into her private chambers in the state she’s in. Etiquette of her day wouldn’t allow it. He likes that she does. She flaunts the rules she was supposed to live by. Besides, they are intimate companions enough by now.

It’s her eyes that enchant him the most. He can never deny how the gaze of those moonstone eyes thrills him. So astounding in their clear colour. Overcast clouds, pebble grey, enchanting smoky mist over the slate grey mountains.

He loves the raven black swallow of Kylo’s eyes as well. Sometimes so dark he can’t tell where the pupil is. Sometimes his eyes are like honey and whiskey splashed on sunshine. Dark and powerful like he is. Iris’s eyes are also so suited to her character. Calm, clear and and drowning soft.

He averts his eyes and gazes over the pile of letters from her solitude in the woods the other day. More join them now. She has a whole cloth-creamy paper stack by her bedside. His smile quirks a little seeing she had more letters from home. More flowers. More niceties to cherish. She deserves all the niceties in the world.

“You’ve had more letters.” He states. Sat there so suave, with his legs crossed. So composed.

Iris smiles and looks over to where the stack of them lay openly on her beside. “Yes. My sisters and their nattering words cannot be contained to just one sheet, so it seems.” Iris smiles.

Draegan notices how more dried flowers sit on the parchment paper. Petals crushed and bruised, dried into perfect clarity. “Foxgloves and bluebells.” He smiles. He hadn’t been on English shores in an age but, he remembered the darling little buds that bloomed native to that isle.

“I imagine they miss your company dearly. Hence the overspill of words.” He predicts.

“That’s kind of you to suppose. But I think I’m actuality, they miss talking _at_ me and pinching my jewellery.” Iris insists.

Draegan tilts his head at her. She always undervalues her impact on her loved ones.

“The solace of letter writing is often a greater benefit than the receipt of a letter itself.” He tells her.

Iris smiles. “It is pleasing to know how they are. I was worried those two would react badly to my elopement. In their usual silly manner but, they reacted better than I could have anticipated. That’s always a cheering thought.” She says as she picks up the brittle stem of the bright pink foxglove flower.

“I can’t decide if their acceptance is because they both found Kylo to be so alluring, _or_ , the fact that I’m now a landed Lady able to send them money for new ribbons and dresses.” She speculated. Draegan laughs. Such a melodic laugh. It was twice as enchanting as his rare voice.

“And they sent me bluebells from the gardens. They remembered how much I like them.” She says. Adoring the little blue flowers. She did wish they would grow here.

“Sweet violets grow hereabouts in the woods if I’m not mistaken. In the spring. They should be blossoming soon, into the warmer months.” He speculates.

“You speak as if you’re a botanist, Draegan.” She suspects with a playful smile.

“Cut the quick, I admit I am. As beautiful as this ruddy and typically Bavarian wilderness is with it’s pine, the moss, and the hardy heather sprouting under the rocks. It’s certainly different to the climes and the nature I’m used to from my home.”

“What’s your home like?” She asks. “Sicily wasn’t it-“

“Sicily is beautiful and serene but, Greece is my true home. My island is where I most adore to be.”

“You have an island?” Iris asks. But really, that’s not surprising as anything else she knows about him. He strikes her as a man who appreciates having his space, much like Kylo. He can roam these woods and his lands for miles and that freedom pleases him.

“I own it in it’s entirety. The only house that sits on it is my own. It can only be accessed by boat and stands alone in the middle of the warm Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey.”

She’s enraptured. “What is there to do on this island?” She seeks.

He’s amazed she cares so about his interests. He knew she had a curious nature. He sees now how deep it stems.

“It is very bright. There’s no medieval darkness to my home like there is to this castle. This is designed for trapping heat in winter. My dwelling is the opposite. It’s designed to be open and light and let the heat escape and the breeze pass through. Able to glimpse the sea and the sky for miles around.” He tells.

“Nothing for miles upon miles but softest shade of blue wherever you look.” He describes.

“It sounds so tranquil.” She admires. “I imagine such a house is so pleasant in the summer heat.”

“It is. And I do miss the sun I must admit. There hasn’t ever been much of that here.” He says as if he can remember how blissful the suns vitamin drenching heat felt on his skin.

“Welcome to Bavaria.” She jokes. He smiles. It warms her stomach to see his grin.

“Tell me more about your house.” She wants to know.

“My house? Well, it has entirely white walls and ivory marble. Open arches and it’s design is very Doric and Corinthian, as like much of Greece’s ancient history. The gardens surrounding it are tropical and lush, they flourish in the heat. Many exotic blooms surround the place. I’m overfond of a garden. It’s so pleasant to me to be able have a home surrounded by green. Fruit trees and olive trees in my orchards, then there’s the sea beyond that, and the beaches.”

“You have your own orchards? That must be such a luxury.” She smiles. The most she’s ever grown is herbs in her garden back in England. They oft withered in the cruel winters.

“It is.” He is pleased to say. He often picks fruit for himself on his walks around the large island. Eats in in the sun as he takes himself off to walk on the beach and feel the water lap his feet. Sand crushed like sifted grainy sugar underfoot.

“It’s not a large island, I grant. I can walk around it entirely in an hour and a half. Go to the beach and swim in the sea if it’s too hot or lounge in a bathing pool to keep cool under the shade of a tree. Read in the breeze of my library. It’s the place I find most tranquil.”

“I’ve never been swimming in the sea, in any sea.” Iris regrets.

“Sea bathing is an ultimate pleasure. Especially as the sun sets. Such colours I can’t even begin to describe across the sky. The sun setting beyond the sea.”

“Do you miss it?” Iris asks with feeling. He smiles slowly.

“No one has ever asked me that before.” He says honestly. His eyes sparkle like the sea he’s speaking so fondly of.

He tilts his head and smiles nicely. “I do miss it.”

“I miss the lull of my home at night after the sun leaves. Pink and yellow, kissed with orange. Like the inside of a seashell. On the most special evenings, my favourite kind, the sky looks almost bruised purple. I can sit there all night with a glass of cherry wine in my hand and watch upwards until the stars come out to chase the sun away. Such peace.”

“I miss the change with the way the wind blows. In the day on the island you can smell the fruit trees. Pomegranates, citrus, figs, and pears. Ripening in the sun. The sand in the air. You can smell it so vividly. At night it changes again. You can smell the sea entwined with the jasmine on my terrace. The woody herbs in the night air from the kitchen garden. Rosemary and basil, sage and thyme.” He tells her. Paints such a detailed picture. His voice is soft with remembrance.

“It sounds perfect.” Iris admits in longing.

“I’d love to have you and Kylo as my guests whenever you should wish. You’ll have your work cut out for you though, as I recall, Kylo isn’t a one for the heat.” He admits with a cunning grin.

“I think even my powers of persuasion couldn’t accomplish that grand feat.” She admits.

“I have the utmost faith in your powers over him, Lady Ren.” He smirks. Iris smiles.

“Thank you again for the truly awful tea but, you were right. It did help my pain.” She admits. Smiling as she stands down the empty cup.

Draegan chuckles. “Always glad to be of help to you.” He smiles.

~

Night fell swift. Heavy and black. Draping across the woods like ink swimming through the thick of the pine trees. Every pine needle on those tall indomitable trees turns to sapphire-black. The dark settles thick around Ranlor, as it always does. This dark tonight takes on a sinister velvet quality to it.

Draegan kept Iris company for most of the afternoon. They went down to the dining room to take luncheon together. Iris gorges on the succulent roast cook made for them. Two roast chickens smothered in butter and garlic and herbs. Cooked with a side of stewed celery, buttered potatoes and golden scallop pies.

Cook sent word up with the footman that Iris needed extra portions of protein and vegetables in her hour of need. Second helpings are mandatory. She does feel particularly unladylike having another portion. Nervously eating in a very demure manner in front of Draegan. He smiled at her timidity. Told her not to be shy on his account. Pushed the plate of food towards her. She didn’t need to stand on ceremony with him. He finds it terribly endearing that she should think to do so.

Afterwards, he reads a Thomas Hardy novel by the fire in the dining hall, and she sat and sketched for a while. They kept one another in companionship. He makes her smile. She calms him.

Kylo still doesn’t return.

Matter of fact. He doesn’t return until many hours later.

Iris was abed after an early night and another warming bath. She misses him. Her heart stabbed sadly getting into bed when he wasn’t there opposite.

She drifts into the crushing vale of sleep listening to the sound of the crackling fire and the wolves yipping and stirring in the woods. Something there was awaking them. They were restless tonight.

They could taste the thirst for blood in the air. Maws dripping. They know what will happen under the slither of the crescent moon hung out there in the sky tonight.

Scuffling footsteps wake her. Rustle of clothes reaches her ears. Sleep ebbs away and she peels open to see across the half dark of their room, a gigantic figure moves there.

Iris frowns perplexed. He was taking his clothes off. Not making any move to come to bed. None that she could discern.

And then he turned around, only in his breeches and boots. Stops and glances towards the bed, only for a second. And then he walks out their bedchamber door. Pulling it shut after him. The latch clicks in the lock.

Iris turns and looks out the gap left in the red curtains, where the night spills in. It’s not a full moon tonight. But she knows he’s off to hunt. He most likely didn’t want to wake her.

He’d go off and hunt; as Draegan suggested to him earlier. Sate the beast. And then, veins pumping straining full of new ichor and a renewed appetite, he’d come home to her, wash off the drying blood spilled all over him, and slip into bed beside her.

Iris sits up and throws the covers off herself. She pads for the chair where she threw her stockings earlier. She quickly steps into the things and hooks them up her legs. Ties the garters harshly in place. She shoves her feet into modest slippers. Not exactly ideal footwear for wandering around in the woods but she doesn’t care. She grabs her vermillion cloak off the back of the door and makes off after her retreating husband.

She doesn’t know what mania enthrals her to go roaming about the woods at night after Kylo. All she does know is it’s an odd breed of curiosity that inspired her. Urged her on. She can’t resist it. She’s intrigued and that is the most stubborn quality she possesses.

She sneaks quietly through the castle. Moonlight swathes every window in milky light. Washing onto the floors and splashing up the walls like frothy silky sea foam. She steps past everything. Feeling her heart and some excitement pumping in her veins. Pulling her velvet cloak around her tighter.

She realises she just look utterly ridiculous in her nightgown and white stockings. Well aware this dress is not thick and she’s wearing no chemise under, she’s painfully aware of the state of the hairs needling on her legs and arms. Standing prickled at the nape of her neck too. Drunken butterflies clash and tumble into each other around her stomach. Her nipples are so hard they almost hurt. Sharp and peaked taut. Resenting little knots pushing outwards at the perilous cold.

Nerves slice cold at her stomach like a savagely sharp sword. Ripping across her middle. Excitement cloys sticky on the bed of her tongue as she comes to a place she’s seldom seen used.

A cleverly built in concealed passage. Leading out past the cellars and right into the wild of the woods. Almost like a smugglers tunnel. In the olden days when wine merchants rolled barrels of wine under the castle and straight down into the chilling stone-cold cellars.

Iris knows why Kylo chose this route; It was disguised.

It wasn’t open. It wasn’t out the castle causeway bridge by way of the front door. He won’t be going out their front door bold as brass. Nor was he going the way out via the kitchen to the gardens. Staff could still be lingering in the kitchens. He can’t be seen. And he can’t see them. Not in this state. Bare chested and walking through his home only in his breeches and boots. Hunger simmering to the boil in his chest.

He wasn’t safe tonight. Especially next to her in bed, listening to her blood thrum in her veins. Seeping out the sweet heaven between her legs.

He winds down stairs. Down and down. She stops at the head of the stairs and listens to his treads echo and clap. Rapping downwards. Spiralling him away from her. She listens and doesn’t take the steps until she’s certain he’s finished with them. Her cloak shoulder brushing the cold rough stone wall. Velvet catching on the sandpaper stone. She can almost hear herself blinking it’s so quiet. The air hums with silence.

She moves when she hears him open the shuddering whining door to the cellars. She tiptoes down the steps as quiet as a mouse. Holding her coat up. Preying she didn’t take a tumble down the cold stone stairs. Down here? She could fall for quite a way until coming to the foot of the plunging turret. She doesn’t like to think about it.

She comes to the bottom of the stairs and peers around the corner. Huddled against the rough exposed stone wall. Hands clasped to the wall. She spies the door of the cellar. Way down the hallway. Down past a parallel row of medieval suits of armour. Such dim light slithers moodily off all the polished figures of them. Eerie and stood frozen in pose. Silent guards to this still night.

She pads softly onto the long garnet runner rug stretching along to the cellar door. A long lolling thick tongue of carpet. She sees ahead. To the thick chunk of oak door he’d left ajar.

Iris surmises something wittily in her head as she comes to the door. She was prowling around a dark castle in the dead of an hour well beyond midnight, in a manner reminiscent of a doomed heroine from a gothic penny novelette. She should have a lit silver candelabra in her hand. Isn’t that what all gothic heroines carry with them into the dark doom where the novel plot unfolds. Where they glimpse dark horrors beneath the full omnipotent white eye of a moon.

She opens the door he’s let swing partially shut. Widens it so she can step through. The damp and musty smell of the ancient cellars curls at her nose. Frigid air dirtied with years upon years of cold stone and dust. A hint of wood from the oak barrels and the lost slosh of red grape where wine had been spilled long ago.

She looks into the dark beyond. The gaping mouth of the low ceilinged place. She slips inside. Her eyes struggle adjusting to such dark. She loses her way and the sight of him. The cellars are so vast she takes a wrong turn more than once.

Eventually, she finds where he left. He’d latched the heavy door behind him. It remained unlocked however. She can see bolts at the top and bottom of the door. A truly well protected entrance.

She’s sure by now, Kylo has a demonstrable head-start. His eyes are suited to dark. She kept bumping into wine racks and old barrels. There’s now plenty of dust smeared grey on her velvet cloak she’s certain.

However, the adrenaline burns fierce in her blood. Heart hammering as she finally clears the castle and comes out of it, stumbling into a thicket bush, but still. No matter. She trudged clumsily over the bramble bush that protected the hidden passageway to the cellar. She snags her cloak and almost falls over twice.

She makes it out - finally - into the woods. Her tied back hair droops down low at the nape of her neck. Tied low over her ears and straggling some curls and flyaways at her face. When she breathes they gust up out the way.

It had been damp and raining today. Miserable. It’s ceased to be miserable now. It almost looks pleasant. The stars wink clear in the night sky. A thousand sparkling pearls scattered across a bed of lush blue. The ground is still stained with wet. Damp leaves squelched under her feet as she made her way under the creaking trees.

She couldn’t see Kylo anymore. He had the ultimate advantage of not getting lost in the cellars and walking headlong into a large cobweb. Cold burns along her arms. Sneaks up her dress and rips at her exposed thighs. She had sleeves on her nightgown coming down to her elbows. Trimmed with a white frill of lace around them. But that meant nothing to the bite of the cold. Hair prickles everywhere. Standing straight and hurting. Goosebumps traverse every inch of her.

She can’t decide if she’s dreadfully nervous or completely excited. Her curious nature has driven her out here. Now she can step up to the consequences of her actions. As she had once said, her brain had the temerity to get her into trouble, and her body and tongue seldom had the ability to follow through in a timely fashion.

She walks deep into the heart of these woods. Night made it such a different terrain to travel in. Dappled starlight freckles her as she passes under the heavy trees. The branches above her quakes and made her jump. When she looked up she spied the twin gold discs of an owls eyes peering down at her. She steps onwards with her heart hammering in her ribs. Pulsing so hard it feels like it shatters her bones with each pump.

She loses herself. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever find her way back to the castle from here. From this point on, She’d concede she was well and truly lost. She ought to have brought breadcrumbs to scatter along behind her.

She confirms her suspicion with a glance around her shoulder. Sees nothing but the woods swallowing up the horizon around her. Eating away the starlight.

Time slips away from her grasp. The moon shafts pale and cold across the sky. Striking shadow and light in unison through the tree trunks. She can’t know how long she’s been wandering out here. She prefers not to know. She wants to wander. She wants to be under the moon and in the night. Just like Kylo is. She can’t explain it- maybe she’s even foolish being out here.

She manages to somehow come onto a small path and follows it. She smiles to herself as it winds her through a big open clearing full of white thornapples. White trumpet flowers sickly in bloom. A thousand of them. Spread across the wood floor like a carpet. Nestled on flat heart shaped ivy leaves of damp swampy green. Poisonous little Moon flowers. How fitting-

She passes by the wide spread of flowers with a small smile on her face. They glow in the night like their petals are crafted of pearl.

A dark shadow crossing through the trees ahead catches her attention. She quickly darts to the nearest tree, ducking behind it. Her hands rasp the bark. Her shoes rustled the damp leaves around her.

She’d found him at long last.

He’s walking parallel, cutting across past where she is. She can see his creamy skin stark in the midnight blue. Watches his muscles ripple as he moves. His raven hair swirled and wild around his face. She can see his eyes from here, more gold than glimmering spanish doubloons.

His arms and chest are smeared with rusty blood. It makes her heart skip a beat and her mouth gape- he’s fed.

Somehow that knowledge both intrigued and horrified her. She doesn’t know why- she, who knows full well what he is and of what animosity he is capable. She shouldn’t be shocked by his feeding habits. Maybe she’d just never fully paid attention to the things, the horrors, he had to go and commit out here under cover of night. Blissful ignorance.

She waits until he’s almost out of sight and then follows him. Slips along in the wake of his long reaching shadows.

She trails after him through the trees. Stepping over roots and hills and bumps in the path. Over rocks and mushed leaves tamped down by the rain.

She winces as she suddenly places her foot down carelessly over a snapping twig. It crunches loud and sharp under her treads. She gasps and darts quick behind another tree. Peering around to look toward him, but still keeping herself out of sight.

He stopped. She watches him just stand there. His huge naked back. Sees how his ribs tug in and pull outwards as he breathes. The slight hint of his profile as he turns his head to the side to listen behind him. Head lowered. Gold eyes tracing over every tree. Vision starting to pin in precise. She watches him lift his head and sniff at the air. Taking slow drags.

A small rumble of a growl leaves his throat and he stalks off again.

It strikes her how far removed from his true self he is. This is merely an echo of the loving man she knows. In fact, there is hardly any man left. The animal has full reign here.

She steps off after him quietly. Resuming her following him. She doesn’t know what fascinated her into following him now.

She's opening Pandora’s box and letting what was within spill free. She’s peeking through the keyhole at something dark, ancient, and strictly forbidden. That’s what entices her. She steps into the shadows to better understand the man she loves.

In her haste to follow after Kylo, she tried not to let any more noises give away her presence. The rustling forest floor seemed determined to make this tricky for her. Matter of fact, she’s so concentrated on where she’s putting her feet, she quickly loses the moving shadow of him again.

She cursed under her breath. Stopping in an opening. Moon flowers burst out glowing and white at the roots of the trees around her. She looks up in the sky as a cloud shifts slow and crawling over the moon. She loses all the light that she was barely enjoying.

She scans the horizon around her. Nothing but fog dark and the even darker stripe of thick trees in her vision. The branches ahead cover her thickly. There’s no light. She can’t see him anymore. She can’t see where he’s gone. Darkness closes in blacker. White ribbons of mist start curling at her feet. She feels cold slip up her legs and trickle slowly along her spine.

Then there comes the most awful growl-

She freezes, her feet root her to the spot. That blood curling growl ebbs from somewhere. She can’t discern where from. The quiet of the wood shifts the sound to be everywhere.

She lets her eyes flit around the trees in front of her. Swallowing down the lump of dread that sat in her throat. She didn’t know what sort of animal's path she’d unknowingly trespassed into.

Little did she know it was from the animal she had willingly followed out here-

She shrieks and jumps out her skin when brute hands fist into her clothes. Rough fingers grip either side of her waist, over her cloak and gown. Wrap around her and pull her around like she’s a flimsy little rag doll. Twists her to him. Her feet drag across the ground. She’s crushed right into his bloodied chest.

He’s panting like a beast. Gold eyes glaring her down. Hands smearing blood on her white nightgown. Her hands instinctively go to press into his hard stomach. Over his abs that shimmer with sweat and drying rusty ichor. She cranes her head slowly up to look into his face- what she finds there terrifies her.

His blood smeared grin with his fangs shining through is the most terrifying thing she’s ever seen. Blood sticks in the cracks of his white teeth. Her knees are trembling in fear.

“Kylo-“ she rasps. Her tongue can barely unstick itself from her mouth to speak. It lays sodden and soft like mushy wet paper. Her voice turns to ash on the air. Eyes wide and brimming with fearful tears.

One huge hand instantly leaves her waist and sinks in the back of her hair. Knotting ably through. He pulls her head back. Her mouth gapes as he tilts her head up. Another low rumble in the back of his husky throat. Golden eyes watch her pulse with much too morbid interest.

“You long for the beast little dove? Well you found him.” Kylo answers with a smirk that came straight from the devil who made him.

The world swirls. Lost and dragging all at once. Kylo crudely shoves her onto her back and rips away her gown like its made of no more than cobwebs under his strong hands.

She whimpers in surprise and the influx of cold as he shreds her clothes. The ties of her cloak pull and dig at her neck. But they’re not even a hindrance for him. Hair coming like dark mud drifts in her face.

Her naked skin feels wrong mushed to the damp mud and leaves of the forest floor. Dirt stains her skin and hair. Pine needles and twigs scraping hard against her skin. Only her stockings are the things left on her body. Where he pulled her, one of her meagre shoes flew off to god knows where. The other dangles precariously off her foot.

He’s above her. His sweaty muscles loom and pin her to the ground. Blood and his sweat smear on her belly where he’s situated. Palms pressed into the soil by her shoulders as he ruts his half hard cock into her through his breeches.

She’s not a hope of escape. Running would be worse for her. If she ran, it’d only get this predator foaming at the mouth.

He leans in and licks a drying smudge of blood off her chest. Tongue furred with copper and iron, slipping along the swell of her breast. Licking up the spill from his feed. She whimpers a little at the hotness of his blazing tongue. The tongue that had earlier helped him drink from someone’s ripped open jugular.

Suddenly, his gorging himself wasn’t enough. As soon as she stepped out into the dark behind him, all he could smell was the ripe perfumery of her. Her blood. Her cunt.

He could hear her heartbeat trembling as she followed after him. Even after he’d fed. She was still there in the distance. Her taste smacking him in the mouth.

How on earth was the beast supposed to resist?

His hands traverse her body. He tilts his head and smirks, his fangs showing as he looks down to the apex of her thighs. Where that sweet rose and salty copper tasting blood bloomed for him. He looks down, enchanted as his fingers inch up her thighs. Drawing away the rag she placed there earlier. Letting it slip free and the pure scent of her wafts into his nose.

His cock fills heavy with blood so fast it makes him dizzy. Precome floods his breeches. Syrup thick and slipping wet down his thighs.

She gasps and her cheeks fill with blood, mortified. She says his name again but she knows that won’t touch him. It won’t even garner his attention. She stays there. Pinned out under his touch like a doomed carcass on a butchers slab. About to be devoured.

She couldn’t look away. She wants to. It’s terrifying seeing him like this. But she’s so wet and aroused she can’t know what rules her. Fear or lust. Both are here. She did want to seek out the beast. And now she had him.

He unbuttons his falls with one rip of his hands. Yanks the front of his breeches open and his cock strains free. Curved and hot. Flushed purple with blood and stringing sloppy with pearly precome. He takes himself in hand and drags himself up against her cunt. Rubbing through her blood and all the wet he’s making leak out of her. Spilling onto the ground below.

His mouth waters at the sight. Tapping his fat flushed cock head against her cunt. Growls and purrs tumbling through his chest in pleasure. Such a sweet little cunt. Ripe for the taking. _All his_.

“I spared you once in the snow in England. Do you remember?” He taunts.

Iris’s mouth gapes. Her eyes are already wide with fear. Her mind drifts back to that night in question. The one she can absolutely remember. The drunks accosting her outside the pub. The one who followed her through the woods. And then it was Kylo who grabbed her and shoved her up against a tree.

He was her mystery hunter in the snow. So ironic that a hungry vampire gained on her that night. And she had the musty smell of bibles lying on her hands as she walked home from church. The parallel is almost laughable.

“I spared you that night when all I wanted to do was sink my cock into you and drink you dry.” He tells her. Growls intruding in on his voice.

She throws her head back and groans into the air, loud, when he shoves the large head of his cock into her.

He growls. Thrusting hard. Punctuating his words with a shove of his hips. Burying his cock deeper and deeper. Drool slips down from his lips as the bliss starts thrumming in their blood.

“Your blood. Your cunt. I wanted you to give it all to me. And you would have if I’d got my hands on you that night- you’d have begged and screamed for me. Begged for my cock to fucking split you open.” He roars. Grabbing her wrists and pinning them down above her head. Fucking her deeper and harder. Brutal.

Her knees clasp his hips as he pounds her into the earth. Leaves and twigs slipping up her back. Dirt and blood smeared across her. He grabs around the backs of her knees and drags her closer. Chuckling cruelly when she gasps and tears fill her eyes with the way he’s so deep and forceful inside her bleeding womb. It feels like he's bruising her tender velvet walls.

But, _oh_ , the pleasure.

Iris thinks she might be loosing her mind with it. She’s never felt a thing like this. So sudden and violent. Stars burst and simmer in her blood. Fizzling and shrieking all over her. Her bloodstream full of cruxes of such primal pleasure. She’d never felt the like before.

Where he’s left her hands to grip her thighs, her arms go over her head. Trying to stab into the earth. Her nails dig into the soil. Mushing into the warm sweat of the dirt. Staining her nails and her fingers. Her veins straining and her muscles corded.

He arched over her and bows his head with a handful of particularly hard powerful thrusts. Shoving himself into her with all he had. He looks down and watches where they’re joined. Watching his cock pound into her quivering cunt. Splitting her. Feeling her squeezing him like a silken vice.

Blood and precome spattered all around her inner thighs. The obscene squelch of their fucking fills the air with grunts and moans and the very animal sounds they make is almost primordial.

He fucks her like they are primitive beasts. Blood pumping through hot bodies. Lusts and tempers fired up. Desire charred them both. Groins melding rough and drenched. Rutting in the mud like they are no better than animals.

He can taste the pulse in her neck. He can hear it so loudly. Her little heart trembling in her chest. The tiny mewls and groans that he fucks hard and makes pour out her mouth. Slipping over the cracks of her dry lips.

She’s making so much noise. Her mouth cracks open and little gasps and cries come out. Noises that sound so much like pain it makes his cock throb inside her.

She clenched down on him and it’s like a new sort of heaven that spurts into his blood. Rushing, rushing, rushing with the blood he fed on earlier. Protein and pleasure and lust powering through him. Makes him fuck her all that much harder. Fucking her into the cold ground.

His eyes like devouring all of her but, they keep slipping up to those trembling veins and the pumping pulse in her neck. His eyes pin down that particular spot.

His hands slither around her thighs and his nails rake her skin. Dragging her closer so she can’t squirm away. His chest crushes to hers. His elbows come up to cradle her head after wrapping her ankles to hook over his back. He nudged her chin aside with his plush lips and runs his mouth along her supple sweating neck. Clammy with the cold. Her nipples are resentful little cherry knots brushing his chest.

His tongue slathers over her neck. So close to the blood beyond her skin. It wouldn’t take much to feed on her like this. He hums at her taste. He gathers the salt of her sweat and her soap on the bed of his bloodied tongue.

He growls more when his cock hits on some magical soft spot. She sucks him in so tight he chuckles at the thought that she doesn’t want to let him pull out too far.

The pleasure is too sublime to deny. Sinking into the rhythm of it. Hips snapping. Bodies swimming in bliss.

He sucks a hard love-bite on her neck and moans around his clenched teeth taking the measure of her pulse.

Her blood pools a lush pattern under his tongue. He can taste its movements. Moving under this tongue like crushed honey and milk. Makes his gums hurt to take just a little taste- just a bite-

He’s envious thinking how much of her sweet uterine blood is being wasted leaking all over his cock. So much so- he rips himself up and away from her with a snarl.

He grabs her and spins her. Flips her over onto her belly. Getting her on her hands and knees for him. His cock hanging heavy and glistening at her soft ass. He palms her plump thighs in his hands.

Always, he loves the curves of her body. That c-bout from her waist to her hips. He loves the little crease of skin at her waist. He huffs in pleasure when his hand seeks her breast and cups the full shape of it. Nipple hard like granite in his palm. He rolls his palm around that little nub to torment her further.

He slides his hips forwards to tease his cock over the ridge of her ass. Almost drooled again, the sight is so blessedly erotic.

She waits to feel his cock slide into her in this position. Stretch her wide and plunge deep. Sloppy and tugging inside her as she trembles and oozes blood and wet down his thighs.

It doesn’t come. He sinks two huge fingers into her instead.

Pushing around all that wet and blood he finds inside her. Letting it squirt and coat over his fingers. He steadies one hand on her lower back as he shoves his fingers deep. Smirking at the sloppy sound her cunt makes.

He curls his fingers in that clever way he does and drives them in her again and again- hearing her moans get louder. She cries out under the moon as the beast fucks her hard on his fingers.

He withdraws after a few moments. Looking at the red and her arousal thick on his fingers. Creamy and bloody.

He keeps her still and shoves his cock back into her weeping cunt. Thrusting home. Thrusting deep. Palming her hip and pounding her in this new position. Her knees sinking into the dirt as she whines loud. Sobbing as tears fall down her face.

Her hands scrabble to hold onto whatever she can find. Sinking into dirt again. Mud stained up her arms and her elbows.

He grunts as he grabs her thighs and yanks them further apart. Sinking her front down lower. Bending her body to get her positioned just right for the way his cock plunged into her. Her nipples almost chafe and sway onto to forest floor. Wood and pine needles dig raw into her knees as he fucks her feral.

Pumping into her from behind on all fours like the wolves do. He wants to bite the scruff of her neck and hear her yelp for him.

He wastes no time slipping the fingers he shoved into her cunt, right into his mouth. His tongue greedily sucking up the taste. His eyes roll back in his head. He’s sure to catch the drips of blood that slip down his palm. He sucks at the web of his fingers to get it all.

He sucks hard and fast til her taste goes away. Feeling how she slides down his throat like ambrosia straight from the gods. He resisted tasting between her thighs afternoon. In his head the beast snarls at him what a fool he was to deny this- She’s a piece of pure heaven.

Now he’s got her blood on his tongue. He wants more. He wants every last drop. He wants to gorge on it til she can’t do anything but twitch. Laying there trembling and leaking for his cock as he drinks her down.

She gasps loud when Kylo’s brutal hand suddenly fists around her neck. Squeezing both sides until bitter black bursts in her vision. Fog and sparks and stars. Her breath can barely churn out her blissed lungs. She wants to rasp his name but she can’t make a sound-

He hooks a hand into the nape of her neck and tugs her up. Straightening her back to thud to his chest. Knees sinking wide. He’s still inside her deep. Dirty dry blood caked hands moving over her hair. Stroking it- then she realises-

He’s brushing it aside. Gaining access to her bare neck. Holding her close so she can’t move away. One hand slipping up over her breast. Savouring this moment before he feeds.

Enjoys the lust that’s shuddering sweet through their veins like bursts of unexpected sweet in sour-ripe fruit.

His fingers slip up her neck and she feels almost dizzy the way he’s gripping her. Drunk with love and pleasure and lost to his predator senses. She’s Stunned. Caught as his prey.

He’s pooling the blood under her skin. Ready to take a proper taste-

He licks her neck again, kisses there with his plump lips. Her head lulls. Slumped back to his meaty shoulder. He sheathes his cock in her deeper to hear yet another ragged moan tumble through her throat. Echoing out to his hands.

Her hands find his sweaty biceps. They’re so curled and locked together, limbs entwined. Her heart is racing and clashing time. The beast chants to taste her rhythm.

A tall shadow beyond her takes his attention away from her neck.

It’s the eyes he catches onto first. Piercing white eyes. Pupils pitch black shadow. He can only see the rings of glowing white.

“Draugr.” Kylo says.

Iris opens her eyes.

“What?” She asks breathily.

Twists around to look at him. Panting as sense flushed back into her head. Slow fractures of reality swim back into her focus. The stars in her eyes float away. She blinks and tries to make sense of the strange language Kylo just used. It was Norse.

“He’s here.” Comes Kylo’s answer.

He’s staring straight ahead. A gentle smile on his blood dried lips. Fangs still sunk down. Chest rising with his ragged breaths. Hands shift and relax on her body.

A drunk easiness flows through him and he knows the cause. Like a hit of absinthe and sugar unfolding in his bloodstream. Like an opium high curling through his bones making him sluggish. Lightheaded and dazed. The effect of his maker.

He’s the only one who can chase the beast away.

“Iris.” His whisper flows reverent and soft though the air. Cutting through the brutal nature of Kylo’s savage fucking.

His call of her name slides right into her head. And there he is. A shadow with glowing white eyes. Set distantly in the trees.

That voice in her head. The one she’s always heard. Her whole life long she’s heard that melodic voice-

_Draegan’s voice._

Realisation dawns in her head like a flash flood.

“You’re finally ready to see. To see all that I am to you.” Draegan croons across to her. And that’s how she knows he’s been there all along.

He moves. For the first time in millennia Draegan steps out the shadows that served him so faithfully. She can’t focus on anything but his face as he steps closer under the dappled moonlight. It freckles over his hair. Blends so well into the colour of his eyes. They look as pearly bright as that enchanting moon up in the heavens tonight. His pale skin and hair stand stark out his dark clothes.

He comes closer to them. Moans tremble out her mouth as Kylo’s pace resumes it's carnality. Gently pushing her down onto her arms again to continue fucking her. Well aware Draegan could see them joining together. He could see everything. And now, Iris could see him.

She looks up at the approaching tall demon with tears in her eyes. They sparkle off the moon like precious gems. The way she is precious to him. She sobs. “It’s you-“ She hiccups brokenly. Kylo’s pace making her toes curl.

He’s the voice she’s always known. When she’s felt sad or alone. In nightmares and in dreams he had drifted to her. Found her out and given her comfort. She had never truly been alone. Draegan has been her protector. Always near. Always kind. Shielding her from ills.

He merely looks at her now. A soft reverence on his expression. Watches Kylo’s hands roam along her body. Watches his vampire fuck her into bliss.

Kylo’s hands are gentler now. He smiles and suddenly gasps. Hips stuttering to a slow when Iris clenched down on him. Clamping tight. Cunt leaking so much he could feel her drip down his thighs as well as her own. Dripping right down to creases of the backs of her bent knees.

Kylo’s mouth comes forwards and finds her ear. “You like that he’s seeing you like this?” He asks as he lazily pinched a nipple in one hand. The pain only made the pleasure that much sweeter.

Iris’s cry rings through both their bones. Draegan’s mouth parts as he watches her face creased up in pleasure. He can hear her heart singing with the desire of it.

“So beautiful.” Draegan comments. His eyes raking over both of them. She hears his benediction so clearly. Can’t believe how much it makes her spine come alive with bliss. She’s aroused by the mere fact of his watching them.

Dragean admires them as if this whole moment was sculpted for him alone. He admires them the way most mortals admired oil paintings and carved statues of beauty. This is his priceless art. Glimpsing these lovers. This view is all his.

Kylo’s mouth at her ear starts to turn hungry. He presses sloppy kisses up around her cheeks. Drags her chin with his fingers to let her lips mould to his. His teeth scrape her lower lip and his fangs have gone. The beast has gone. Her husband remains.

“Cum for me, Iris. Come undone.” Kylo asks. Sucking kisses over her neck. Groaning into her shoulders. Whining and shutting his eyes as he feels his climax bearing down on him. Hers must be too. She’s never felt so tight around him.

Iris’s hands claw into the earths again. Dirt digging under her nails. Her head thrown back and Kylo’s mouth groans, open and huffing against her neck. His hand smoothing up her spine. His other hand finding her clit and rubbing slow pressing circles. Milking every drop of pleasure out of her he possibly could.

Strangled moans signal her climax nearing too. “Let him watch you cum for me.” He sighs into her shoulder.

She shuts her eyes and cries out. Cunt clamping down on him. He fucks her though the orgasm that wrecked her body. So much pleasure pounding through her. Every nerve of her is on fire. Altered. Shattered. Torn apart and stitched together again.

Too much silky sensation and bliss coursing through her. Scorching hot in her blood. She’s never felt pleasure like this before. It saps everything off her. Voice, breath and sense. She only just manages to feel how Kylo grips her hip and pours his spend deep inside. Rope after sticky rope of it splashing inside her with his climax.

He doesn’t stop. He’s fucking her gently and feeling his spend leak down the both of them. He doesn’t cease until every spark of pleasure leaves her body. He feels it dissipate. Feels her sob and throw her head down as he strokes his glistening cock slower and slower into her creamy cunt. Sloppy and spilling over with them.

Kylo sits back on his heels. Keeping himself shoved in her warm heat for a moment longer.

When Iris catches her breath and looks up, the forest in its full glory came back to her. Her climax has bleached colour and sound and importance off everything around them.

Draegan’s gone.

She looks around for him as she comes down from the high of their sex. She scans the tree line but, he’s nowhere to be found.

She pants. Sighing as Kylo pulls out of her. Groaning as she shifts her knees closer together. Her hips sting with the strain of being on all fours. As do her shoulders and the palms of her hands are scratched and scuffed to ribbons. She’s dirty and sweaty and smudged in blood.

Kylo stands and rights his trouser falls. He then swoops and picks her up and wraps her in her red cloak. He slings her into his arms, and carries her home safe.

Over his shoulder, Iris watches the spot they’d inhabited in the woods. The place they’d fucked and Draegan had seen them so plainly.

She buries her nose in the crook of Kylo’s sweaty neck and lets the rhythms of his stride lull her to exhaustion. She can feel her blood and his spend drip down her thighs. Her every limb aches with sated bliss and exertion.

She can put the revelations of this night off until the sun rises red gold over this wood tomorrow. For now, she only has the energy for rest.

White eyes watch over them, all the way back to the castle.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you loved it - let me know. Comments of all varieties are welcome 🖤


	32. Agonies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get sultry up in here- SULTRY as hell I do declare-

She doesn’t remember much of being carried out of the night and back into the warm safe solace of the castle. She dreams in crushing darkness. Shadows, the dark woods, and all the things that lurk under the canopy of the gnarled trees. All that she’d seen-

Sleep catches on her wearied bones quick and hugs her tight.

She can only just recall the smell of congealing copper ichor and the smudge of dry blood sticky and staining on her skin. Her head against the cool musk of her husbands naked chest as he held her.

Something flushes botanic and lazy into her dreams. Disturbing the crushing valley of her sleep. A curl of plainly sweet spice. Floral. Purple. Oil of lavender and a wet warmth rouses her.

Her eyes open sluggishly slow, taking in the blue dawn splashing an almost shade of mauve up their crimson walled bedchamber. Prickles of warmth and needles of pain shoot through her lower legs. She looks down her body and she sees Kylo’s hand with a washcloth bunched into his big fingers. Wiping away the dirt and the blood at her knees. He’s wiped her arms and hands. Scrubbed around her nails to get rid of the mud crusted there where she dug her fingers into the earth.

She winces where she lays on the pillow. He’s knelt by her side of the bed. Dewy from a bath of his own. Wearing a dark pair of breeches sitting up his hips.

The dutiful husband is back. The animal is gone. It fucked it’s lust out on her and stalked away. Taking with it, it’s influence. Tuscan gold eyes and claws all now vanished.

His damp hair is clinging wet to his head and still dripping a little down onto his shoulders. Beads of water rolling away down his scrubbed skin. He scrubbed and scrubbed away the mess dried

upon his chest until the soapy-cloudy milk of the water was pink as roses. He’s still warmed for now. But soon the heat of him will fade. Turning back into the usual cold. The natural state of his skin is cold like stone. Like sun leaving a hulking grey stone church. Warmth soon bleeds out of him.

He’s concentrating on her minor cuts and scrapes with tender care. He pauses to turn around and wring out the cloth in a porcelain bowl of steaming water by his side, set on the floor where he knelt. The water was rosy pink and swirled with grains of gritty sticky mud.

He rinses the cloth and squeezes it under his large grasp. Wet fingers retaking the cloth and sliding the wet warmth higher up her thighs. The pillows rustled and the sheets under her crumpled with her movement. His warm eyes - now walnut brown and kind - flicked up to find her face.

She still loves their shade when they are a startling gold, she always had. Eyes as bright gold as a field of sunflowers under a cloudless sky.

“You’re awake.” He smiles gently. She returns that smile. Hers is weaker.

She tries to shift and a lightning storm of sudden pain throbs through her body. She breathes and winces through the sharpness. He bolts up to the bed and helps her sit up. His slightly warm damp hands fall soft on her skin. He’d managed to slip a new clean nightgown on her. He needed to purchase her more of them - a whole stack - he’s ripped so many away from her skin.

The light tissue-linen of them posed no challenge to his hungry strong hands. It rather posed the greatest temptation to him. Such a thin seductive barrier. Soft and delicate as spun spiders silk. Kissing the contours and climes of her body in a way he can’t help but envy. Wrapping her up in washy fabric so translucent he swore some nights he could hear her heartbeat quaking, thumping at the gentle material. He’s always loved her in - and immediately out - of her nightgowns.

“Do you need something for pain?” He asks her carefully. Brushing stray hairs from her brow. Sat perched by her hip. Big hand solid and comforting on her stomach.

“No, I’m alright. Just a little sore.” She answers him. Propping herself up back on a dented cloud of her white pillows.

Her skin rasps nicely against the clean cotton. She moans in the back of her throat as her limbs stretch. Coupled with the slight wave of pain. It’s dulled now. Pain shrinking, less violent, thrashing gentle lightning in her veins. A washy and slushing surge of it smoothing up her arms and down her legs. It speaks eloquently of how thoroughly she was used.

She can feel the crescent of his nail marks burning into her thighs and the soft flanks of her ass. The feral bruises on her neck where he’s bitten love bites. The scrapes of twigs and pine needles raw on her knees. Otherwise, she was hale as anything.

She lifts her eyes and looks up at him, an earnest and guilty expression weighted on his brow. She leans in and presses those soft lips of his into such a sweetly gentle kiss, it makes a sigh move through his chest.

He cups the side of her head. Pulling away with his plump lips wet and glistening. His eyes look sore with love.

She nudges her brow into his, leaning up to slant their faces together. Tucking her legs off to the side. His cooling hand rests to cover just above her knee. She could read the worry churning in him. The quiet unspoken tide it.

When he regained his human senses and carried her back. He would have seen every violet bruise and red raw scrape she’d have gained from joining with him on that forest floor on her knees and hands.

As he had dutifully cleaned the dirt off her legs and ran a warm cloth between them as she slept. He’d have seen everything the beast had done and he’d be busy now despising himself for it all. Every scratch nudges him that inch by careful inch further into self imposed guilt.

“I‘m well, Kylo.” She reiterated. Slipping one aching arm up to cup his damp wild locks. “A few bruises won’t kill me.” She whispers softly to him. Pulling back and leaning in repose against the great carved headboard. Feathers in the cushions moulding around her back.

He doesn’t look reassured. She can tell by the resolute hardness of his honey-brown eyes. He was so stubborn it took a lot of words to reach into his Viking head. Skull as thick and stubborn as a rams.

“I could have hurt you so badly.” He says with regretful fear entwined into his words.

“You said it best, Kylo. I longed for the beast and I found him.” She smiles. Allowing her fingers to trace a fetching wave of an inky curl by his forehead.

He tilts his head, as he attempts to understand. A frown pulls down his heavy dark brows in the middle.

“In that form, Warriors have trembled at my feet and fled in fear, calling out to their gods. But, you do not. How can that be?” He asks her, almost breathless with wonder.

She should have been crying and flinching away in fear. There was terror in her eyes when he took her but no revulsion. None whatsoever.

She smiles wider and just shrugs - looking so completely enthralled with him. So much love there for him, in her cloud grey eyes. Limitless amounts. It’s not possible for her to be repulsed by this man nor the beast he so ably becomes. Supposedly the moon has a darker side, and that doesn’t quell her love of it one bit.

That’s her love for Kylo. She embraces him with open palms and wide eyes. She sees every bit of him and she doesn’t retreat in shyness from it. She waded into this love from him until the waters crashed over her head and dragged her down.

She doesn’t know any other way to passionate love.

“Because I love all of you.” Comes her modest answer.

Still her fingers toy with the hair that fell around his eyes. Such deep soulful eyes. She’d always thought so. Even from her first terrifying glance. The glance she hadn’t known had set that very beast stalking upon her treads.

He tilts his head into her hand when she cups his jaw. His eyes look warm and wet when he captures her wrist in a gentle grip and kisses her hand. Tucking his big body into her chest afterwards. Curling his head into her neck. Nuzzling his nose and lips into her.

It wasn’t for lust. It was for succour. She welcomed him. He cuddled up into her chest like a frightened child during a storm. Holding her tight. Dwarfing her so utterly and seeking comfort at the same time. It’s endearing.

He seems ten times her size, with limitless strength and this monument of a man sought solace in her timid hold.

She wraps her arms around his cooling big back. Slanting her nose against the massive trapezius muscle of his shoulder. Musky male skin and the chalk of some plain soap he’s rubbed on to take the sticky crust of blood away. She leans her head into his. Cradling each other in such sacred silence.

The way Iris has slanted her head into him. She’s turned towards the window. She can see a sunrise is just starting to bleed into the sky.

A wash of apricot and marigold yellow borders the blue of the dawn in the sky. Sun begins to pepper gold over the distant black trees. The blue night still clinging cloying heavy to their branches begins to filter away. Moulded onto every pine needle on the branches. Like sticky blue paint. The sun will drain away all nights darkness and it’s eerie cloaking cold.

“I reckon dawn is on the rise.” Iris remarks gently. Feeling comfort in the way she can feel him breathing against her. The heavy weight of him. Kylo twists his head up and glances out the half pulled drapes. Blue and light glares obvious beyond the dark blood draperies.

“So it is.” He comments back. He leans around and clambers over her on the bed. Taking up his natural place by her side. His body bowed into hers. Resting side by side. He takes her hand and lazily brings it to his lush lips to kiss at her fingers.

“What is your day looking like today?” Iris asks him. Sinking into her pillows and turning to face him. Covers tucked between her legs. Shoulder exposed in her gaping nightgown neckline like it always was. A tempting plain of skin his lips are overly familiar with wandering over.

“I can stay here with you.” Kylo mumbles. Shifting to shove one elbow under his pillow. His other hand roaming to find the cotton covered hill of her hip. Bruises he could see like dark flower petals on her skin under the cotton. Like violet petals blooming in a bath, under a cloud of soapy white water.

“All I’ll be doing is sleeping my love. You should see to your work. You had yesterday with me too. If I hamper much more upon your time, I think Jomar will come in and drag you to your study by your ear.”

Kylo scoffs a sound of amusement. “I’d like to see him try.” He huffs, adjusting on the bed.

“We both know he’d do it gladly. Don’t issue him a challenge.” Iris supposed with mirth. Laying her head down near the bulky meat of his arm and snuggling closer. Kylo can see the pinpricks of chill pimple up on her skin. He untucked the covers and lays them over her bare legs and up her hips.

“I’ll rest awhile. Then I’ll take to all those stacks of pesky papers that are doubtless awaiting my attention.” He yawns. Stretching back and letting his body sink into the bliss of his bed.

Iris smiles. Shutting her eyes and nestling her cheek deep into her pillow. Her body still thrums a little with the aches and stresses of her wild night on the forest floor. But she’s happy.

No cramps or backaches to flare up and annoy as of yet. Their pleasure of earlier has driven out all notions she felt of pain. She’s slightly embarrassed to think Kylo braved blood in order to ensure she was adequately attired with a clean rag so she didn’t bleed all over the bed. She knows blood doesn’t phase him. Especially not now he’s fed. He can deal with her indisposed nature in a much calmer manner.

Kylo shifts his head on his pillow and watches her rest. The calm thump of her heart echoes to his ears and it still sounds divine.

He’s not sure why but, It reminds him of a time long ago. Of his home, his true home. In that Viking age in which he grew.

Their simple timber cottage bordered a wild wood and In the bluest hour of a suns month morn, before dagmal. Long before the sun crept up across the sky, he can remember being woken by the soft call of a a nightingales song drifting over that cerulean dawn. He remembers laying back onto his warm wool and all his pelts covering his carved bench bed. That sound made him smile.

It was peace in its purest form; before his mother woke and started the washing or the mending. Before father rose and went to gather fish to roast and smoke for dagmal at daybreak. And definitely before his pesky brothers started rousing trouble.

The sheer purity of nature in that call; he finds that same calm serenity in so many things about his wife. All those little crux’s of her humanity and her innocence. He madly loves every last one of them. He was excited from the day he put a gold ring on her hand, to know that they would be enamoured with each new piece of each other’s souls they uncovered.

He leans in and kisses her forehead. Smells the cotton from her pillow and the wild night air still caught up in her hair. Scents of the pines of Ranlor’s forest. It’s sticky dry mud. It’s cold midnight air as blue as Prussian ink. He lays on her pillow. If only just to be nearer to the calming influence of her heart beating away time and rest.

Birdsong begins to litter the air around the treetops of the castle. A fine little frail symphony to herald the gold new morning and the Lord of the land slumbers next to his wife.

His rest doesn’t keep a firm hold on him for long. He drifts muzzling out of sleep a while later, to daylight filtering foggy into their warm bedchamber, with Iris nestled next to him. Bundled up and dead to the world. Cocooned in the red covers.

He drags himself begrudgingly out of his bed and lets her get some much earned rest.

He parts from the bed and splashes his face with cold water from the basin in the wash room. Dresses in some clothes that looked halfway decent. A sapphire satin waistcoat, a white shirt and cravat and the rest of his clothes is his usual black. Wilton, his valet, tried to suggest a dark grey tone to him one day. Kylo rolled his eyes and walked off. Effectively ending that conversation-

He crosses back through the bedroom. Seeing she’s still splayed out asleep. He makes a note to come and see her after luncheon. Give her a few hours of rest before disturbing her again. She’d probably want a bath too. He’ll talk to her maid in a while. He slips out the door and leaves her to her dreams.

And dreams she has, deep crushing things. Sleep like molasses swallows her up and keeps her trapped there. A flea stuck in a pool of ink.

The drowning reveries in her head feeling as tangible and as real as if she were awake. Dreams so set she could almost reach out and grasp them.

She could hear the sea. Taste the sea. That distinct flavour of salt curling off of, she imagines, some gently foaming lapis waves.

The rush and crush of it. Fall and retreat of the tide. Ocean sounds come slow but surely to her, water slithering up and then off - up and off again - teasing the velvet grain of sodden sand. Sea foam licking its salty stain on the shore.

She opens her eyes and she finds herself in paradise-

She’s never seen so much blue in her entire life. It’s in the sky, dusted with meagre puffs of white clouds. Flimsy like flour. The sun is far stronger. It’s blazing proud and she can feel it’s kiss pooling buttery warmth onto her lower legs.

The blue is there again, so much smothering blue, in the ocean she can see glittering that same sun around for miles. A giant spill of sapphire gems twinkling in the bay that engulfs all around. She’s on an island perched in this sea. She can see boats on the far horizon skimming the waves. Ivory sails thrown into the golden flame of the suns ferocity.

Her limbs feel lazy, servile. She’s stretched back onto a huge wooden carved chaise, an impressive limed oak frame, and it’s stuffed with Prussian blue velvet cushions that look almost like the sea she’s gazing at.

Apart from the beauty of the view surrounding her, she can see she’s in fact, laying asleep on a marble terrace. Carved with huge arches and columns that drip strongly down to the balustrade that so ably framed sea and sky. Vines strangle every inch of those marble pillars. Studded with little white flowers that shiver scent out on the breeze.

Something snaps on the wind around her. The wind that brushes along her skin. The air is baked dry and hot. Perfumed with sickly flowers. She can smell rain soaked lemon trees.

When she peers around to her right she can see an arched door that lead to a huge white and bohemian blue bedchamber. An enormity of cotton sheets and thicker velvet covers shrouding a huge bed. Chiffon curtains draped around the four corner posters of it. Canopies of flimsy white. A clutch of plump white cotton pillows sit fat and snug at the intricate oaken headboard. Branches entwined and arched together to make patterns. Oak leaves carved into the grain of the wood.

The furniture thereabouts looks like nothing she’s ever seen before. Intricate and something that she suspected was designed with an eastern or European influence. A modest dresser and chair sit near the far wall. A roughly woven silver rug stretched across a marble tiled floor in stone of creamy porcelain-white. The walls are stark stinging white. Made even greater in the sunshine.

The gauzy curtains at the arched doors to this luxurious room, tumbled on the wind. Ghostly white tongues slapping on the dry breeze. Carrying the scent of lemons and Catalan jasmine along with it. It’s woven into the modest cloth.

She sits up, and the many velvety cushions behind her shifted. She presses her hands back and then gazed down at what draped her body. A silk robe in a lush sombre tone of teal-mint green.

She’s never owned anything so fine.

No chemises. No stays or stockings. In this heat it would be too stifling. She’s wearing silk and the way it glides against her skin tells her that’s _all_ she’s wearing. Her hair is loose and free down her back. Swaying in her face.

Looking around, the only decoration on this fine terrace is a modest limed oak table and three chairs set just beside her. Laden with luxuries that look godly. An array of food fit for Kings.

Heaps and heaps of fresh fruit. Berries, strawberries, peaches, and pomegranates. Green and red grapes, bunches of dark cherries, plump oranges. All of them bursting with juice and flavour. There’s a tall shapely glass carafe of berry dark wine, and two empty glasses. A jar of fresh honey with a wooden dipper plunged into the liquid gold and loaves of bread. Dishes of olives shimmering with their own oil. A platter plated with chunks of creamy wedges of cheese laid beside discs of dried sliced red and pink meats.

Her stomach squirms in wanting for the rich food. She sits up even more. Pulling up her strangely undressed legs and resting her back against the crook of the chaises back rest. Dapples of sunshine freckle slanted across her bare feet. She sits with both knees folded together. Her skin peeping pale out the folds of her gown.

She somehow knows this island. Something about it she is familiar with. Perhaps it’s the enchanting tales she’s heard coming from its singular tall occupant's mouth that had bewitched her so- he did have a silver tongue after all. It enchanted so finely.

A noise behind her comes slow and gentle on the breeze. Along with the birdsong and the waves and the crash of branches on trees that comes from somewhere beyond. An orchard behind her view. The ones he liked to walk through to pick fruit off the offering branches.

It comes trailing along the marble tiles. Headed right for her. A calm tread makes its serene way closer. She twists her head to see them but they’re already close enough to touch.

She shuts her eyes in bliss. Her heart flushed so sudden and full with it. She feels like the ripe fruit on that table. So fit to burst with the heady sensation.

Her body blazes brighter than that sun hanging in the noon day sky.

Warm fingertips slide along her cheekbone, tucking a stray hair behind her ear for her that strayed out across her cheek. The clever touch gently follows the shape of her ear and down, back across her jawbone.

It feels so pleasurable a gasping drawn sigh leaves her lips. She tilts her head to give them greater access. Hair falling over her opposite shoulder. A smile she can’t help, stretched her cheeks wide. Bliss so sudden her chest quakes with the excitement of it.

“Enjoyed your rest, little spark?” Asks a silvery voice she definitely knows.

She isn’t surprised at all to look around to see Draegan stood glowing seraphic in the sunshine behind her. Hair like the centre of the palest white sun - or moon. Bare chested in that red velvet robe she's seen him wear so many times. Bloodied shade of velvet.

She found solace in the intimacy of his touch. And it was intimate. It was the touch of a patient and all knowing lover.

She twists around to see him stood in the sun behind her. Fingers trailing through the ends of a lock of her muddy hair. Admiring the way it drags past his dexterous fingers.

Her hair was nowhere near as finely resplendent as his. Hers was rough, sometimes dry and unmanageably thick. Coarse as brambles. Draegan’s own hair was like drenched silk to the touch. Finely soft and yielding. A spill of icy sand. Hers seemed the opposite but he always admired how it fell in natural curls around her neck.

“Seems a waste to sleep when this view is the one before me.” She tells him amused. It makes him smile down at her. Eyes piercing blue like glimpsing discs of a proud sky.

She smiles at him as he comes down next to her. Bending a leg to sit beside her. Grey ash breeches up his hips and along his strong thighs and lengthy legs. Setting himself on the wide chaise. Wide enough to comfortably fit them both and more.

He sits near her hip. The view is too magnificent to waste but, they look at each other instead.

His skin glowed warm, still beating out heat that she could feel as he was near her. It pours off his hair too. The infusion of lemon trees with jasmine and sunny bright heat blazing off the velvet of his skin. His chalky soap she can smell too. Always could when he came close. Cashmere wood and pomegranate. Lavishly opulent and as dark as the rest of him.

He sets himself near to her and stands down the glass goblet of cherry wine he held in one hand on the table nearby.

He turns back and rakes his eyes over her. One hand coming up to her cheek and stroking hair back from her ear as he admired her face. His touch seared her and she always yearned for more. No caress was ever long enough.

“I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to have you here.” He says warmly. His palm cupping the whole of her cheek. She could feel the brisk metal of his rings. “I’ve longed for you to see my home.” He confesses.

“It’s beautiful, Draegan.” She says. And she means it. It’s paradise. She’d never believed too strongly in the almighty. But she does reckon this place is heaven on earth. She’s lucky enough to be up here with him.

“I wouldn’t share it with anyone else.” He admits. This is sacred.

“I’m honoured to be such a cherished guest.” She tells.

“The most cherished.” He answers quietly. Drawing his hand back to her cheek. His shaded cobalt eyes lingering on her lips.

Iris hardly knows what to say to such heartening words. Especially as he then leans in and kisses her-

She’d always harboured her secret thoughts about Draegan and now she knew how many of them were true. He looked like a divine man who knew how to make a woman - or man - swoon at the knees with a kiss. And oh, how he could-

Something unbidden and ancient came undone inside her. Fell apart like water yielding to it’s tide. So natural. Destined. Tears spear hard as knives at the corners of her eyes.

So this was where her lust had been hiding.

How dangerously good it felt to take something she’s wanted so ferociously- her head swims. Her lips thrash with the sunny warmth of him. Such a rush of everything in her blood. Buds snapping open in the spring. Crashing waves. Velvet kisses. Soul piercing love. Connection. Her soul stringing to his.

She’s dizzy. She wants to cry out with the joy of this. Trembling. Whimpering into his lush mouth. This sensation should never stop.

He made something sealed up and tucked away deep inside of her, shatter.

He’s pulled it open and her love for him floods free. She’s tamped it’s influence down from the day she first saw him. Stood in the flesh and real as the life he cherishes, there suddenly, at Ranlor.

She kisses him back. She can’t resist him. It’s not possible. She feels how it can’t be. She can’t hide this anymore. He smiles when he feels how she responds.

Iris leans forward slowly and brings around her fingers to knot into the back of his silken hair. She’s wanted to touch him like this for so long. It seems she’s been living with a madness. A wicked madness.

Draegan’s hand settles warm and light on her hip. Smoothing over silk and pulling her in. Reeling her close. He tastes like dark sweet cherries and his lips are catastrophic.

She kneels up into his embrace, right in his lap. His hands are ready and eager to wrap around her. Gliding as smooth as water across her silken back.

When they pull away, Iris gasps for air that just doesn’t come. Her lips are bruised from him. Wet and shining red.

They share breath and smiles as he pulls away too. Nuzzling his nose across her cheek. Breath fanning her skin as he kisses across her cheek and down her jaw. Pinpricks of lust stab her skin and make her eyes roll back in her head. _Bliss_.

Her arms are slanted, nails digging into his shoulders. Hands across his velvet red back. Sweeping into his soft hair. It really was white silk. His tongue is similarly as seductive and soft. Like cream poured along her lips. His kiss is an indulgence.

Pushing along her lower lip and pulling her into a kiss again. He pulls every atom of breath out her lungs. Her toes are already curling up in pleasure. Spine alive with kicking humming nerves.

He tucks two fingers under her chin and tilts her head to where he wants it. Adoring the rise and fall of her breasts as he makes her pant. Dragging his lush lovely mouth along her jaw and under it. Kissing her throat. She moans his name and it sounds like either a curse or a blessing. He can’t decide which.

“Draegan...” She sighs. His name sounds so right in her mouth.

He chuckles warmly into her throat. “Yes, my little spark?” He teases back.

Smile savage white and sharp. He kisses her pulse and feels it kick quicker because of the glory of his mouth on her. Lust had full reign over the both of them now.

His name sounds divine rolling off the bed of her tongue. He’s nipping her hot creamy skin, dragging his mouth over every freckle. The tip of his nose, his long lashes feathering into her. He’s melting her spine with bliss. He can feel it. Can taste the mania and the lust in her blood. Blooming like those rare blood hibiscus flowers he has in his gardens a mere stones throw away.

“Trust you to get started without me.” Comes a mirthful dark and gravelly voice from across the terrace.

Iris opens her eyes and looks across. Where she’d been admiring the sea only moments ago. Now Kylo stands in the centre of that view.

He too was dressed down. Only in breeches and a white shirt that stuck like a second skin to his huge wet torso. Evidently he’d been taking a dip in the bath - or maybe even the waves.

Water drips silver off his hair and onto his shirt shoulders. Damply clinging to his head. He’s barefoot too. A damp cloth towel hangs from one hand. One he’s scuffed across his wild hair to get dried. He looks hungry and impatient. A curling devil smirk on his lips awaits them both.

Iris doesn’t untangle herself from Draegan. He makes no ounce of effort to remove himself from her. Iris feels how he merely twists his head where it rests against the hollow of her throat. Where he’s trailing a regiment of passionate open mouthed kisses along her collarbone.

Iris watches her husband come closer. Walking to them.

Draegan slips the shoulder of her gown away, drawing it down her skin to expose more. To love more- To kiss more.

She shudders a breath when Kylo comes closer and occupies her lips. Drawing his thick fingers over her cheek and leaning down to kiss her fully on the mouth. Drawing all her sighs and all her air away.

Their touches are so vastly differing; Kylo’s hands land heavier, his touch is rougher but no less loving. He is quick to savour. Impatient.

Draegan’s is gentler, more wicked. His fingertips dance across her skin with a wisdom she can’t understand. His touch borders on the plain between a tease and a whisper light caress.

Kylo was always hungry. Draegan was patient. He could wait. Kylo has no such attributes about denying himself anything.

Kylo’s greedy kisses, combined now with the way Draegan has cleverly slipped half her gown away, has her gasping and grasping the back of Kylo’s damp shaggy hair. He too smells like lemons and salt from the sea. His lips are salty also. Skin warmed from sun. She could feel his heat under her palms. Churning and mixing with the cold of him.

He smirks against her. Her greedy husband. She can feel it- stretching against her mouth. He looks across and catches Draegan's eye. They share a grin, a wordless conversation.

Her husband joins the clever ploy of stripping her entirely of her gown where she’s knelt.

Between them they’ve managed to work it down to her waist, freeing her breasts and baring them to their hungry gazes. Kylo chuckles in revealing her creamy skin and her berry red nipples standing stark. Wrapping his fingers around one breast to tease one nipple into a hard knot.

He slips messy wet kisses down her neck. A trail his warm wet mouth left behind in searing salty embraces. Leaving the tides taste dripping down her skin. She whines when the flat of his hot tongue presses against her hard nipple. Rudely ripping the rest of her gown away and slurping his lush lips around the peak of her breast.

She drags her fingers through both their hair. Scraped her nails through the damp shining black thorns of Kylo’s locks as he suckled her breast. Her fingers glide into the waterfall white of Draegan’s hair.

He’s against her neck still. The large span of his hand pressed under her ribs and around her waist. His velvet mouth skates along her collarbone, exploring her weak spots with powerful ease.

She’s suddenly hauled into Kylo’s arms. Gown drawing open in the centre of her body. He sinks his strong grip into her malleable ass and brings her into the middle of the chaise, splayed between them. Pushing her back into the cloud of velvet pillows.

Now she’s partially naked. Laid between a beautiful tall demon and a hulking great vampire.

“Always so beautiful.” Draegan comments. Devouring her as she was laid out before them. Lashes shuttering as he looks. A better feast than the table full of sustenance a mere few feet away.

He carefully draws away his side of her gown. Where Iris meets his eyes, electric static blushes through her skin. Heat skips along in her blood enough to make her burn.

“And all ours.” Kylo adds in lustful selfish agreement. He always was greedy. His boyish smile curling up. His grin would be macabre if it wasn’t so full of lust. His lips are puffy and red. Eyes hard as his cock is, swelling up in his breeches. He sits there watching her. Lazily cupping himself through his clothes.

A vampire of ancient years and sometimes he appears no more than a randy boy trying to glut himself on sex like a bashful virgin. Iris feels this too keenly sometimes.

It’s in the way he often rams his fingers into her deep and licks at her arousal as it spills out her cunt. He sucks and slurps up the sloppy mess of her like he’s eager to please her. As if she’d be incensed or insulted if he missed a drop. He sucks between her legs. Sucks her all into his mouth and shakes his head. Let’s her plump lips slip out of his mouth and then attacks them again.

So many times he’s spat into her and watched as his drool strings from his glistening mouth. Flat bed of his tongue lapping her taste up before he shoves two fingers deep and curls them. Slams her with his hand so hard it’s an ache. When she does cum, it’s a scream of his name he’s treated to. Wet cream pouring over his hand.

He acts so young sometimes in the way he fucks her, hungry and hard. Gripping her hips and pounding her relentless until he draws tearful sobs out her throat. Shattered glass moans that he laps up.

He fists hair, drags his teeth, scrapes bruises and scratches. Slaps of his stinging big hand. Nail marks and pretty red rose bruises. That’s Kylo’s love when the mood takes him.

Draegan chuckles at his lovers candour. He’s always been so open about not denying himself sexual pleasures.

Draegan’s love was a wholly different beast; a man as sensual and as timeless as himself had so many tricks stored up his sleeve it was maddening.

He liked to edge- bringing her to the precipice of orgasm again and again until she wailed for its bliss to ravage her. Hands ripping into the sheets or the tender skin of his back. He could draw sex out for hours upon hours if he was feeling merciful. His touch was calmer, more eased. He touched like he moved - supple and rhythmic. When he finally let the pleasure come- it was obliterating.

Kylo leaves her trembling and aching and crying to be used again. Draegan makes sure every ounce of energy is spent in her. So much that she can barely stammer his name.

She looks up - switching glances between them. She sneaks her fingers into Draegans open robe and holds Kylo’s wrist. Pulling them both close as she can manage. Her men. Her loves. Pulling them to her and they are helpless to resist that drawing charm.

Kylo follows where she grips his arm, he’s quick to refocus his grip on her breast, the nipple he’d wetted with his lips he now rolls it under his hand. Draegan's fingers trail a teasing path down her ribs and over her soft stomach. Counting the skip over every rib.

Kylo captured her lips again. Bats her hand off him and roughly takes her chin in a grip and lowers his face to hers. A sudden enmeshment of a salty kiss and his warm puffy mouth catches her lower lip with the corner of his teeth. Scrapes and licks up the morsels of pain that she whimpers with. He smiles

“Laid out so prettily for us, little spark. How could we possibly resist?” Draegan asks her. His fingers slipping lower, lower, lower.

Now the clever demon has his hand hovering over the soft round of her cunt. Stroking through her curls down between her legs. A curled knuckle drags through the hair there. The savour before the take.

She gasps and her thighs quiver when he slips further down. Cupping the peach-like mound of her cunt in hand. Feeling her heat and her satiny slick glisten on his fingers. That bare essence of woman. He slowly rubs up and down. Drawing more desire and lust between her thighs. Stroking, teasing. Smiling as she whines for more.

She throws her head back to the pillows and sighs as their touches increase in frequency and desire. She wanted them both for hours. She wanted their bodies and hands traversing her. Their mouths everywhere all at once until it was too much. A thousand hungry mouths devouring her all at once. Sucking, swallowing. Crushing her.

Every conceivable caress from their hands she’d return tenfold. She wants to drink them in and feel nothing but their limbs intertwined. Knotted together in heat and sweat and pleasure. She wants to writhe with them, on top of them, between them, below them until she can’t take another thrust more. And then she wants it to happen all over again.

Iris wants them both to devastate her, to wreck her with love. She trusts them both to stitch back together every broken piece of her when they’re done.

There were only two of them, but they had the whole world for her in their sacred touches. Paradise wasn’t suddenly this beautiful nirvana of an island. Rather it was the three of them locked together.

Finally she’s found the two men who’s souls she hadn’t known she’d been crying out for.

Draegan's fingers just reach between her legs, shoving inside her dripping wet cunt just as Kylo’s smug mouth diverts to her breast to suck again- and shamefully, she abruptly wakes up.

She bolts upright in bed with a gasp pulled sharp from her lips. It hurt her lungs where her breath left her. Covers clutched to her sweaty chest. Blinking at the familiar surroundings. She slept so deeply, coming out of it was like trying to crawl out of a pool of hot thick syrup. It stays bleary on her mind for a moment.

Overcast sky chips in foggy from the window. A meagre day blazing continues on without her.

She sat there and digested the contents of her fevered dreams. She remembered it so clearly. Everything seemed so still and her brain and body are racing at a thousand thoughts and feelings per second. She catches her breath.

The _both_ of them- Draegan and Kylo. Together. And her _in between_ them. Now there was a thought that would take a lot of mulling over- especially after last nights events.

She can’t hide how desperately her body was reacting to that particular vision.

Between her legs she feels her heartbeat quicken. Warmth pooling at her inner thighs, sticky and hot. She feels that glimmer of heat sticking behind her pelvis. That churning warmth that usually belonged to the intimate time of bedding she shared with Kylo at night.

As they pawed at each other under the covers. Tacky skin to skin. Rutting together. The way he shoves his cock deep and spends his spreading heat inside her warm walls. Letting her cunt milk him of every jerking drop. The way she wails his name. Fingers digging into skin. The way he pierced her deep with his unyielding fucking.

She thinks of him when he climaxes. The way he throws back his head. His throat corded and glistening in sticky sweat. The Adam’s Apple of his throat bobs with his open mouthed groan.

She clenched at the mere memory of it. Hungry for her husband. Starving for the desire and bliss he could give her. She bites her lip and ruminated on the rather unbelievable idea that this dream has made her lust seep over into reality.

It all felt so real. The sights, the sounds, the smell of the sea.

She throws the red covers off herself and lets the cool air of their bedchamber soothe her. Running a hand along the back of her neck. Sweat gathers dewy onto her palm. Soaking the nape of her neck. Her hair feels too hot and suffocating against her heated skin. She feels as if she's burning in her own skin. She doesn’t think the dream had anything to do with it- it must just be the heat from the fire laid in the half.

She moves her legs out of bed and makes to stand. Ignoring the way that her nipples rasp painful against her gown. It makes her let out a tiny murmur of a gasp when she moves. The friction sends a whole frisson of need plunging sharply into her belly.

She pads for the bathroom. Where her thighs chafe together she feels more and more wet cling and drip down. She suspects its almost touching her knees by now. Such a startling dream in some ways. In others, it wasn’t quite so much.

She’s grateful for the cool of the black and white bathroom tiles on her feet. It's a delightful relief. It sparks and shimmers cold up her calves through from the balls of her feet. She comes to the dresser and sees there's a fresh basin of water ready for her use.

She doesn’t want to call Rose to bring water up for a bath. There seemed little point. She’s so blazing hot and blush pink in her own skin, she doesn’t want to slip into a scorching bath. If they were still blessed with snow on the woods, she’d go out right now and roll around in a great mound of it. Anything to cool off.

She catches her reflection in the oval mirror before her as she lifts her arms and strips the gown off over her head. Her dewy skin shines almost pallid and ill in the cloudy light coming in the tiny window. She looks ashen and wrung through with it.

She wipes her forearm across her brow. Sweat sheening slippery on her skin. She works her tumbled hair up into the messiest chignon ever known to man. Wrapping a bit of muslin around the fist of of it she makes. Balling it up out the way so she can wash her face.

Standing there, naked, and impossibly hot, she dips the corner of a flannel in the water and begins to rub the sweat away from her face. She sighs with the ice cool of it against her blazing skin. It was like she woke up with a fever twisting vile and sinful in her blood. Knotting up her stomach.

When she runs the cloth over her neck and shoulders. She almost shudders with the bliss of it. Heat blares crimson now in her cheeks. Creeping up her neck. Flourishing on her neck and across her breastbone. She tips her head to the ceiling and sighs as she feels the water drip down her body. Slipping down over her breasts and down her thighs.

A benediction of a moan slips out her mouth, a soft little prayer. The water feels heavenly running down her skin. But that ache in her gut still burns like a forest fire. Charring her ravened limbs and leaving her nerves exposed and raw for the taking.

She felt different. It’s wrong- but somehow she feels altered.

A mania was set in her skin. Overwhelming desire lights it's greedy and all-consuming inferno in her blood. It pounds selfishly through her without care.

She tries to put it aside. Temples throbbing painfully. Her thighs are trembling and she’s so aroused that every movement flares another wave of lust to shudder along her spine. Finding a home between her legs. She’s so slick with arousal she can’t believe- she has to focus on simply breathing.

She carries on washing herself. Hand steady to the dresser before her. Feeling the water beading down her back and pooling damp at her feet. She bites on her lower lip as she runs the cloth over her hips and belly, taking away the sweat.

She almost hesitated touching her own skin any lower but, she wanted to wash away the slick and salt. She keeps her eyes shut as she removes the cloth and sets it aside. She can barley recognise the sound that comes from her when she runs the damp cloth between her legs.

Her hips stutter into the warmth, riding into the touch. Her mind is so foggy and hazy with hormones and lust she begins to drift-

She imagines Kylo is here- behind her. His big cold chest at her back. Cold as granite stone to the touch as his meaty muscled arm comes around her and slips down her stomach. Following those soapy drips of water. He would gather them on his fingers as his knuckles curl outwards and grope for the heat of her cunt-

He’d plunge his fingers into her like he was ravaging into hidden treasure. She’d feel his smirk against the side of her neck as he grins. The warmth of his breath. The coarse language he’d use to describe in filthy detail what he wants to do to and with her.

She’d look in the mirror at him, he’d make her look. Make her see what they look like joined. His other hand would cup a breast or grab her neck and gently squeeze as he smothers her in kisses. His hot breath would bleed into her hair as he fucks his big fingers into her.

 _“Is that good, dove?”_ As he pulls out and lets her see how his fingers drip with her cream. “ _Look how much your sweet cunt loves my fingers.”_

She whimpers louder.

Her knees knocking against the dresser in front of her sends a sharp rap into her bones that she sorely needed. It bashed some sense into her. Her body sags forwards into the great clunky wooden thing. Pain throbs through her kneecaps but, it’s nothing to the pain radiating between her legs.

She throws the cloth down and looks in the mirror. Her cheeks are redder and brow more dewy. Her eyes like full grey clouds and shining with bright lust.

It’s getting worse and she knows what could quell her ache.

~

Kylo was in a bad way. One much similar to that of his wife.

It had started innocuously enough. He thought it was just warm in his study. The fire wasn’t crackling in the half. Jomar sent a hall boy in to light it and Kylo barked at him rudely that he didn’t need it. His jaw grit tight.

Another day and he would have apologised. Today is not a day where his temper is inundated with patience. He snaps, he growls, he glares.

Jomar comes in to bring his Lord a stack of papers and makes a quip that has Kylo wanting to snap his fangs at him. He’s definitely set in a bad way. Jomar guides any staff out of that half of the castle - cautions maids and footmen to abandon cleaning duties along with the sweeping. They would never be in any danger. It’s just best to be about eight hundred yards south of wherever a brooding vampire moodily sits.

Kylo opens the window in his study, sits back down at his desk and adjusts in his seat. His skin grows more and more clammy. He gets up and opens the window out wider. Perhaps the incoming cool of late evening air would set a chill in his bones that drives out this particular heat.

He’s had them before. Mood swings take him over so vast and quick. His temper is tied into the animal half of him sometimes.

Sometimes he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. The beast's heat throws him into a rut of sorts. Today is one of those days. He may have fed and sated last night but, it’s all pathetically inadequate to him now.

In this mood that’s taken hold, he’s been known to brawl, to fight, feed and - previous to a time before marrying his gorgeous wife - fuck his own slicked up fist raw until he roars when he cums. What a pathetic sight he was. Foaming at the mouth desperate for sex, drooling for it.

That bliss of sex. To pound ruthlessly into a partner and lose himself in that carnal act until they’re filled and sloppy with his cum. Instead he was left bucking his hips into his own hand. Fucking into the sloppy oozing mess he makes and shredding a pillow with his fangs when he bites clean through it as his climax comes. Eyes gold like the sands of some ancient desert and growling the whole way through.

He can remember a time after leaving Draegan, when that solo pastime was decidedly not how he spent his heat. Time was he’d find a whore, a good one. He’d take them for everything they were worth. He’d take it all.

He’d make her scream and cry on his cock and then he’d drain them of every last drop.

Back then he’d been so consumed by the monster that he was hardly even a man. So many innocent lives he had slain in his hunger, one right after the next. Blood trailed behind him long enough to wrap around this world twice like a red satin ribbon.

Too many times he woke up after one of his debauched nights, sticking to his partners dried rusty bedsheets with a corpse splayed out naked beside him. Blood blooming wet across the once white sheets of the bed. Their glassy dull eyes fixed on the ceiling with their blood spattered lips gaping.

Their last terrible view of this world was of a monster with gold coin eyes looming over them and drinking them down. He would drink until their screams died to ash and their skin turned as granite cold as him as stiff as a marble headstone.

He’s not that man anymore and he couldn’t be more glad for it. He atoned for his rotten black soul by only now killing people who didn’t deserve their life. Thieves, rapists, foul drunks, and men who were prone to violence using their fists on an undeserving wife or children.

As he grew out of the mania of killing, he became a better example. He stuck to the shadows to feed, became a better and more Lordly example.

No more taking up with plump perfumed whores reeling of orange water, stale odour, and sweat from their last client. Ladies of desperate means that cried out when he gets them on their knees. They whined how good his cock was when he yanked hard on their hair. Pulled their necks back and let them really scream when they felt the fangs scrape on the side of their neck.

No more supping from randy old middle aged widows, duchesses or countesses who desperately sought his dashing dark company. He hung off their pretty arms like a dark bauble they wanted to flaunt. They thought he was concerned with affection, want of title and station.

Things he didn’t need at all. They were his sport.

They were only old hens unawares a fox had snuck his sly way into the coop. Those elder ladies had so fluffed their hair and preened. They would blush with how he smooched their hands and nibbled kisses on their necks saying salacious things in their ears when they were at afternoon tea. He was the scandalous grave digger by their sides at the opera, at restaurants, and fine plays. Those old cradle snatchers had flung themselves at him.

He existed in their à la mode apartments in their fashionable towns and fabulously rich hotels. Walked with them in green manicured parks in the posh ends of the city, with their yapping little toy dogs on their nimble leads.

He kissed those susceptible and once-respected high society ladies languidly behind the sickly pink rose bushes. He helped them pick out rich silk gowns, a fierce red or tulip pink was his preferred favourite. He made sure they draped themselves in enough highly priced fat jewels to look like elegant crystal chandeliers.

Kylo dressed them up like prized lambs all for the fun of his slaughter.

He loved looking at the shades of the blood spattered on the shining diamonds and the violent bright silk after he was done.

They flattered themselves that he loved them. All he had loved and ever would love about them was their kicking pulses and their full juicy veins.

They wanted to lavish their money, fame, and good fortune on him. They played coy, hard to get, and flirted. His senses ensured they wouldn’t so easily forget the tall dark dashing man who whispered sin and looked as tempting as heaven.

He merely smiled as he’d look at their throats. They thought he was admiring their jewels when really he was busy thinking how prettily their jewel ruby blood would spill into his hungry dry mouth when he tore them open.

He didn’t care about any of it back then. It was a sick staged play he was proud to act a starring part of. The hunger ruled him, he was ultimately shackled to it.

As he grew on through the years the heats still came and went. Only now he tended to suffer them alone. Since he married Iris he hadn’t felt such a powerful pull as this, it’s almost unholy. It’s unbearable.

He can’t get comfortable. His chair that usually cradles his back so well may as well be made out of needles. He keeps shifting to adjust himself in his chair, made all the more difficult by the fact he was trying to ignore the erection that was tenting his breeches. Trousers so tight his cock was pasted to his thigh. His balls felt so impossibly heavy, like iron weights, throbbing with need. He can feel the need pulsing at the very core of him.

He leans forward, tucks his chair right under his desk and scoots closer. Right into the path of the cold draft from the window that blusters papers around his desk. He stabs, slams his hand into the top of it. Pinning his paperwork where it lay, fist clenched. He slips his hand over his mouth, clamping his teeth hard together. Fangs pushing like knives at his lower jaw. Liable and hungry to spring out.

Panting as he shirked his full dress. His hand scrabbles for his neck and hurriedly undoes his cravat, ripping the linen so hard off his neck it hurts. The cloth tearing aside as he yanks it away.

He growls as it catches and throws it to the floor beside him, uncaring. Terse angry movements. He was so pent up he wanted to stand and stomp again and again on that strip of cloth like a moody child. It’s only crime was being wrapped around his neck. It felt like it was suffocating him.

He curses and undoes the top button of his shirt. After a minute he undoes the next and the next. He unbuttons his waistcoat. The material he was wearing felt like it was strangling him. His boots that are custom fitted feel wrong on his feet. His legs itch with the tight infernal breeches. His shirt chafes against his straining puckered nipples in a way that gets him gritting his teeth.

It hurts. It all _hurts_. His skin feels too small for his body. Like it's crawling off his own bones. It nags at him. It's infuriating him. He lets his waistcoat swing open under his arms.

He’s aroused, stiff as a metal flagpole. He’s just trying to read this paragraph in this business letter that he’s read for around the eight hundredth time.

He swallows and takes a deep breath. The animal cackles and mocks him in his head. This is who he is. No manner of breathing pattern and calming thought, however well intentioned, will alter this state.

He’s so aroused he thinks that he might need to go lock himself in the dungeons for the wildness of the vile sexual wants that run through his head.

He wants to find Iris. He wants to pin her down and lick her cunt til she squirms and gushes into his mouth. He wants to drink down her sweet cream between her legs like its his own personal cup of blessed sacred wine.

He wants to push his cock deep and fuck her so hard he’s at serious risk of breaking her bones with his crushing hands. He’d growl louder with every moaning scream she would give him.

His reverie about the dungeons is leading him down a dangerously erotic path. Now all he can picture is her wrists bound with chains- heavy black chains strung to the ceiling, stretched out and up with her pale creamy thighs parted. He wants her pinned to one of the dungeon walls like a disheveled prisoner. White nightgown dirty in tatters on her body, breasts bared, skirts shredded and filthy. He wants to be the prowling beast that finds her there, wet and sobbing to be set free.

Only he wouldn’t. He’d use her. In foul ways he’d use her.

He’d lower himself under her legs and let her cunt weep the blood from her courses and wetness into his mouth. Let her hang there dripping and oozing into his mouth like an animal carcass dripping ichor.

He’d shove his tongue inside her and get to taste that beautiful thick blood and her messy wet cunt all in one lick. He’d make her cum and clench and squeeze his tongue until her blood slips straight over the bed of his tongue and back into his throat. He’d seize her hips and rub his bloody face over every nerve between her legs. He’d suckle her clit and he wouldn’t let up for hours. She would be crying for him to give her a reprieve. He would have a wailing bride in the dungeons after all-

If he felt merciful, maybe after that, he’d sink his thick cock deep into her and hear her sob because of it. He'd watch the tears roll and lap them up to taste her pain. Leave her own blood smudged across her face.

He’d ram into her there like she’s no more than a needy thing to be spent into. A piece of meat. Nothing more than a willing cunt for his cock to plunder. A thing for him and only for him to spill into. To use over and over at his leisure. He wonders at what point in time his fantasies had become so densely medieval.

His cock drools more precome in his lap. His thighs are wet with it now, sodden. He can feel himself pulse even harder if that was even possible. So hard he can’t think of anything else now but sinking into something soft and yielding and not retreating until he’s cum six times in a goddamn row.

He’s hunched over his desk tearing his hands into his inky hair. Gold starting to swirl through the russet brown of his glaring eyes. He tried to scrape his fingers through his tresses to scour out that disturbing dungeon fantasy he never even knew he’s been holding back.

Nothing to be done for it. He can’t take this agony anymore. He shoves his fingers to his breeches and starts to yank open his falls, fingers fumble on the bronze buttons. He’d have to spend here into a kerchief and slip upstairs to clean himself off after.

An innocent little scuffle sounds over by the door, off echoing in the castle. He grits his jaw and a breathy growl tumbles out his chest. His hands still at his breeches.

He hears some poor doomed idiot making their way down the hall towards his office.

“ _What?”_ He snaps horribly before the door even opens. Before the person the other side of it even lays their hand near the doorknob. His mood not any the more improved at the intimation of company.

He sits back from the desk and opens his legs wide in his chair, leaving some space between him and his desk. He waits-

His great suffering is rewarded. Opportunity literally comes knocking.

The door opens. He can scent whose the other side of it. A scent that’s all _woman_. Skin, lavender soap and her pear geranium scent that lives as a faded ghost on all her clothes. His Iris and her pungent arousal.

He raises his sour eyes to the door and sees the sight of her there that sets his cock throbbing all the more. The smell of her got him weeping in his trousers. The sight of her gets him snarling with his grit teeth.

She’s walking back the door with her back to the wood. She looks him right in the eyes as she steps back and closes it. Enclosing them quite alone.

She’s mused. Iris is never mussed. She’s a neat woman usually but, today she’s no mind for that. She’s wrapped in her smoke grey patterned dressing gown. Pathetic blush pink silken slippers on her feet. Her skin almost sheens as if it’s wet. Her hair is carelessly thrown into a messy arrangement.

She reaches her hand back and over to twist the scuffed gold key in the lock.

The beast is singing Handel’s hallelujah chorus in his head. He really should warn her that that door won’t he opening again without her cunt having been split open and stuffed full of his cock.

He doesn’t move, predator instinct. He watches her instead. His chest moving violently as he pants. Shirt undone almost past his ribs. Some swirls of hair sticking to his temple with sweat. Eyes so haunting and gold she gets wetter at the mere sight.

He runs his tongue over his lower teeth as he watches her walk over to him. There's mania in her steps, she doesn’t look right either. She’s dewy and flushed pink as much as he is. Eyes blown wide and heavy with lust.

He didn’t need to see any of that. He could tell by the way she has her eyes set on him, the way she walks to him. It’s urgent and she’s coming to take what she needs.

He waits still. Even though the hell hound in his head is snarling and slobbering it’s maw. Snapping at the flimsy gates of his patience. It can’t be held back for long.

Plush mouth hanging open as he looks up at her. He could almost taste her from here. Cyprine sweet cunt overflowing with hormones, wet and blood for him.

He swallows as she gets to the side of his chair, her hand braces on the armrest. They don’t need words for this. They need actions far more.

She leans over and mashes her lips to his. She sinks her hand into the back of his hair and kisses him deeper. Clawing into him.

His tongue slicks like wet gliding velvet onto hers where she pushes into his mouth. He clamps her hips and hauls her across the chair. She helps him, clambers onto him and sets her body in his lap. He holds onto her ass and she grinds into him. Feeling how savagely hard he is already. Stiff and aching.

She tests his patience by grinding her hips in wide deep circles over him, uncaring if she makes a mess of her gown. Her head is far too foggy and aroused to care about such a minor thing as whether or not she drips slick mess and blood all over the inside of her gown. He bites her bottom lip and she pulls back, the scrape of pain firing more arousal in her blood.

“Did you need some relief, wife?” He sits back in his chair, testing her. Teasing almost. He’s harder than rock and he’s sat there all smug and suave asking her the question they both can’t ignore.

His eyes are brilliant wheaten gold now, full of fire. She likes how he’s assured and confident of her needs.

She stands and backs away to his desk. Settling herself atop it right in front of him, knees spread. Nothing on her legs.

She draws both halves of her gown aside and lets him plainly see how needy she is. Her cheeks are so full of blood he doesn’t know what’s more alluring, her cheeks throwing out heat or the newly bared sight of wet cunt displayed for him. Puffy and pink. Glistening and bleeding.

And all of it is his.

“I need you inside me Kylo. _Please_. Please-I need it-“ She hiccups. Voice broken like shattered ice on the lake in winter. Tumbled to dry ash in her mouth with her need choking her chords.

“What precisely do you need from me?” He stalls.

Sat back in his chair with his legs thrown wide, chest half exposed. Mountain breeze from the window ruffling and ripping at the ends of his hair. He can see the cool is making her aching nipples scrape against the printed cotton of her gown. Must be so hard and painful by now, arrow points of pain.

She reaches forward to scrabble at his hand. She gets a grip on it and leads him close. Pushes his fingers between her legs and throws her head back to moan loud when his fingertips graze along her inner thigh. Sweeping up blood and wet and rubbing it over her puffy needy lips.

His mouth falls open into a smile. When he moves his fingers the sheer sound of the amount of wet that slicks into the air is obscenely beautiful. She weeps so much for him.

“I could smell you as you were walking down the hall, dove. This little cunt just dripping for me.” He tells her. Fingers squelching as he pushes hard into her.

Testing the boundaries of her need. Blood slipping over his fingers. Enmeshed with her wet cunt. A deadly combination. Enough to bring him to his knees. He fucks and curls his fingers inside her. Raking along spots that have her seeing sparks in her eyes and he’s only thrust his fingers in twice.

He slams his hand into her. Ramming impossibly deep. Tears squeeze out the corner of her eyes as he does. A sob leaves her mouth and she wants to weep- really she does. Because his touch is electric and soothing but, it’s not even close to being enough-

She bursts into tears when the ache doesn’t leave. Panting. Squirming. Trying to grab his arm to thrust deeper to see if that helps. Widening her hips. She’s so desperate, it’s agony.

“More. More- god. I need _more_. I need your cock. Now.” She sighs. Unable to believe the language her mouth was spewing. She felt possessed. After this she’ll be needing a priest and vial of holy water to wash this gorgeous sin away.

But maybe she’ll just cherish it as their dirty conjugal secret instead. Clasp it close to her heart and guard it that way. Kylo could make sinning look like absolute bliss.

Kylo’s slowly retreating his hand from her hot cunt. Quick to lick up the globs of garnet blood slipping down the webs of his fingers, curling his tongue around the copper and the satin wet of her.

She’s moving as he does. She turns around and braces herself over his desk. Sweaty hands clasped on his papers. She bends across his desk, in his lap and pleads so prettily with tears running cold trails down her cheeks.

“ _Please_ \- I’m begging you.” She sighs. By now the pain was getting too much to bear, she needs free of it. She needs him pounding into her in that carnal way he did in the forest. Make her feel. Make her breath shorten and her blood set to sparkle with lust and bliss.

She hitched her gown up the back of her thighs. Not fully exposed, not yet. She spreads her thighs apart a little wider, looking at him as she does. Urging as she looks into those golden eyes.

He can’t resist when she offers herself up like that. He stands in a second. Boots clack harsh on the tiles as he fists his trousers in his hands and tears them open down his hips. Bats his shirt tails out the way.

He steps to her and throws that dressing gown over her ass. Eyes sharp and predator hearing kicking in as he fists his cock ready and lines up to her offered dripping cunt.

He slides home in one vicious, knocking thrust. They groan so loud it vibrates the air in the room. So brutal.

But such bliss- at last.

He doesn’t let her adjust. He doesn’t go slow. He slams into her and that’s the violent pace he keeps too.

Iris cries out for him. Air catching in her mouth as she whines. Kylo shoves the gown off her arms to grab and fist at more skin. Her earlier scrapes from the forest last night shriek with agony where he’s pounding her into the desk. Her hips hitting hard and hot-white, grating pain into her hip where it bashes into the lip of it.

She doesn’t feel a thing. There’s only him. Only the divine feeling of his cock tunneling deep. Raking and scorching against all those inner soft spots that quake with each thrust. The liquid slap of their sexes is so loud, Kylo can taste them mingling on the air. So wet. So tight.

So much more sweetly stimulating than fucking into his hand.

His nails dagger into her ass. Fingers clawed to her skin. Dragging her hips back onto his throbbing thick cock. His sac slapping into her. Her pussy is so swollen and needy the sharp hit of it is another spiking element of pleasure being fucked into her. Her eyes are rolling back in her head. Tumbles of loose hair down around her sweaty neck, stuck in dark coils to her skin.

“Such a perfect cunt.” He sighs simply in between thrusts, breathily almost. He’s slack jawed where he gazed down to see the angry red column of his cock sliding glistening into her. Smeared with her cum and her blood.

She sticks to him in pearly white strings. He doesn’t know if that’s his precome or her arousal, either way it’s a delicious sight. Them dripping all over and into each other. Slurping wet squirting down their thighs.

He groans as his pace intensifies. Her creamy lips gripping him so tight he can barely stand to pull back. Holding, clamping him like a silk vice. He moans continuously as he pumps in deeper and deeper. She’s so full it feels like he’s barely a second away from tearing her open. That exquisite agony of fullness driving her out her sane mind.

He roars a savage growl when he feels her getting close. His hands dig for her waist. Pushing one thigh of hers to bend up over his desk, slanting her so he could push in even deeper. Hit on spots she never understood she had until he fucked her like this. All animal. No love.

He grabs her ass and hammers her. Teeth grit as he watches her body jolt and all those plump places of her ripple with his brutal rhythm.

She whines his name and that turns him on. Her whimpers turn him on. “ _Oh_ , hmmn. Kylo- _oh_ -“

There was no mercy in the way he sawed into her now. He drove the most beautiful tragic sounding wails out her mouth. She was closer, closer to falling apart and crying on his cock.

 _That’s it._ He thinks. Cry on me. _Cum on me. Let that pretty cunt gush all over me, dove._

He huffs pleased sounds. Puffs of breath really- as he fucks unendingly and takes her spasming and clenching into her absolutely mind numbing orgasm. Fucking with pure abandon. He didn’t even slow down.

Her cum slicked the way for him to move even faster. Turning her into his drooling, blabbering mess. She was needy and she’d come to the right animal if she wanted a thorough fucking.

He doesn’t stop until she comes again, her second orgasm quick to follow the last. He smirks as he sees a thin stream of liquid pour out of her around his cock. Dribbling wet to the papers below her cunt, soaking them to ruin. She’d gushed for him. He sighs in desire as he feels her cunt cinch down tight. In his head the beast roars it’s pleased howl.

She’s tightening around him, cumming hard and he gets sucked into the pleasure of it too.

Something hits him- and it isn’t his orgasm. His frenzied fractured brain starts to piece things together.

Spring. An influx of hormones. Him going into wild ruts again. Iris’s lust. The answer was here before him plain as day. The fact of it hitting him upside the head so hard he could barely speak. He pushes it away to focus on her but it just keeps coming back and sneaking into his head; the tall inhuman reason behind all this. He doesn’t know if it turns him on, or makes him want to rage.

His climax joins onto the end of hers. He’s glad for the distraction of it. Moulding them locked tight together as he snarls, shouts, and growls. His molten hot cum starts to fill her up. Drenching deep and spurting out of her. Mingled rosy pink with her blood and her creamy fluids. Her thighs and his desktop now shines with it. Sloppy blood and mess spattered around where their groins had met.

They’re both still groaning long after the remaining shreds of pleasure dissolve out their systems. Every last little flutter of pleasure gone. The heat and the agony finally dissipated. Leaving two blissed out husks of people in its wake.

Iris sags down onto his desk. He collapses above her. Holding herself on her elbows.

He was still shallowly holding the globes of her ass and thrusting in. Giving her every last drop. A curse leaves his lips when he finally finishes spending deep. In this state, he could more than amply fill her to the brim.

His sight fractures back in slow dripping degrees. Blurred at the edges as he zones in on her dewy back, sweat running down the divots of her spine. The slice of her shoulder blade bones. The way her dewy cheek rests a smear of sweat against his polished mahogany desk. Scattered and strewn now with papers, quills, disturbed to pour things on the floor in disarray. They were just lucky his vicious hips didn’t pound the inkwell over. That would have taken some explaining.

“ _Oh_ , god.” Iris finally croaks. Where she moves papers rustled under her belly. Kylo’s thankful. She did beg for him and he obeyed. He was however slightly wary that he’d fucked her into oblivion.

She pushes herself up and unhitched her shaking leg from the desk's surface, quill and blotting papers stuck to her leg. Kylo withdraws his dripping cock from her heat, marveling at the sheer mess they’d made. He swallows and catches his breath with fumbling hands he tucks his breeches up but leaves them undone. He bends to retrieve her gown, oddly silent. Usually he quipped something dirty or gave her that smirk.

Iris twists around, body still flushed and supine from the immensity of his using her. He’s stood behind her, looping the crumpled cotton gown around her. He redressed her tenderly in silence. Inside he was still burning, quaking with rage. He won’t let her see this.

He pulls her close by both sides of her gown. Drawing her close. Almost purring with satisfaction, delighted little rumbles of his breathy groans tumbled through his chest. He cups her waist. Pushes his face to hers and kisses her slow and quietly. Sweat dripping down his nose, sheening on his brow.

He passes her his kerchief so she can clean herself up between her legs. She takes it and he holds her chin and plucks another kiss onto her lips. He steps away to shut the window. It was making her clammy skin prickle uncomfortably cold. She’s shivering in her thin gown.

Night is almost here outside, falling heavy. A cloudy sky covers the moon. The woods and gardens lost to black and blue ink again. Moon tried its best to shimmer off the pricey hedges and the carved shrubs of the ornamental Dutch garden but, it’s a struggle.

“Better go and get cleaned up for dinner.” Kylo says lovingly and soft to her as she knots her gowns sash around her waist once more.

She nods. Still panting and lightheaded. Scanning around for her slippers. She found one- the other evaded her. He’d pushed her up out of them. They both fell off her feet. Kylo smiles when he finds it before she does. Slid away under the footwell of his desk.

He crouched down and cups her ankle to place the flimsy silk thing back on her foot for her. His hands slip up and now clasped around the back of her knee. He stays there for a second and kisses her raw kneecap. Still baring red scratches from their night tryst in the woods. He looks up at her as he kisses.

She smiles down at him. Palming through his hair when he shoves his nose into her soft belly through her gown and kisses there. “I’ll be up shortly to get bathed and dressed.” He says when he stands to his full height. It's taking every ounce of his countenance to mask the rage starting to crawl sluggish and determined through his veins.

Now the pleasure was gone. His head is empty and anger is starting to fill it.

“I’ll see you upstairs.” Iris says. Cupping his hand for a moment before she turns and walks away on still trembling legs, fever burned away in her blood. Kylo’s would take a little longer to dissipate.

He sits back in his chair. Listens to the door creak and unlock, her footsteps fade off into the marble. Soft little sounds. Like a gentle tapping of rain at the windowpane. He rights his breeches and buttons his shirt up a bit more. But he’s still sweating and dripping. And he’s still fuming.

Anger burns bile on the bed of his tongue. Blazing at the back of his mouth and down his throat. He wants to shout and mangle something with his bare hands. He can feel his blood itch with his impatience. He’s never been good at hiding his rage. Ever since he was a boy he’s been governed by it. Led into mistakes by it time and time again. Blinded by its sheer all consuming power. All these eras later and it’s no different.

He can’t stay still. His bones are crawling, itching still. His blood is boiling like the bubbles in champagne. He rips himself out his chair and goes to the side dresser to pour himself a brandy. His shaking hands make an absolute mess of opening the crystal decanter. He slams the top down so hard it almost shatters to crystals under his brute hands.

He knows why he was so uncomfortable. He knows why Iris acted like she did, like an animal in heat begging for him.

Draegan's influence was far reaching indeed. He was the reason for this new lease of life and lust that’s taking over them. He’d got to Iris. That was the reason for her mania.

He wants to cause pain and hurt. He wants to kill him.

That realisation of his influence hasn’t cooled him down. He hasn’t calmed by fucking his wife. Nasty rage claws into his gut so tight it’s like his belly is full of spiking burrs. So angry. Someone had taken a spiked mace to his temper and he rather wants to do the same. He wants to snap some bones and break some skin.

His stuttering hand pours himself a drink, trembles the amber alcohol into a thick walled glass. He stands and sups back a mouthful of it. He can’t believe this. All this coming to him now like he’s trapped in a storm that’s battering him and ripping gouges out his body.

The drink tastes like ash on his tongue.

He swallows and lets it's heat join the melting blaze of fire in his chest. He clenches his free fist. It’s no use-

He slams the glass on the desk to shards, sharp jagged daggers of glass decorate his desk. Dribbles of apricot gold brandy soaks his ruined stack of correspondence.

Kylo stalks out the room, his spine flecked with white hot rage. He moves like a tempest. Fury radiating out of every pore. He had to do something about his problem and right now all he wants to do is wring it by the neck until it’s stone cold dead.

He knows how to find him. Old instincts lead him quickly to where he is. He follows the trail of Catalan jasmine through the castle until he finds its tall, pale, and devastating source.

He’s in a parlour on the ground floor of the castle near the dining hall with a glass of wine and a book cracked open in his hands, no doubt.

That’s almost exactly how Kylo finds him. He slams the door open and lets the solid wood bash hard into the wainscoting behind it. Draegan could sense his angry stomps powering their way to where he stood from across the castle.

Draegan was there. The long sylph of him stood at the window and looking out onto the dark gardens, he’d stood to pour himself more wine. The room was dark and so still. Half amber and dark in the night and the light from the roaring fire casting amber over the cerulean blue gloomy furniture.

He turns his regal head to look at the doorway to see the hulking great man who fills it. Thunder clouds are roaming at the doorcase.

He swallows- because he can smell the scent of sex pouring off his ex lover's skin.

Blood, skin and the sweet feminine musk of arousal. _Iris_. He blazed bright with it. The telltale fusion of feral scents that came from fucking.

Kylo stands there for a second like a hurricane seeking permission to desolate the room. He’s panting, fuming, slicked up in sweat and still rumpled and fired up from the incident in his office. His eyes glitter so bitterly. Bottomless velvet dark, like black tourmaline. All kindness in him is swallowed up. Gone.

He doesn’t know what’s left but, it’s violent and it wants pain.

Draegan stands there, letting this silence roll over them like ink. Setting them, sticking them into this moment.

Kylo’s jaw is grit tight as he storms into the room and carves his brutal way straight across to him. He’s still panting, ruthlessly annoyed. Wound up.

Draegan’s blue eyes don’t know where to rest on him. He watches him stalk closer and closer. That cloud of his fury sparking the warm dry air behind him. He’s the angel of death but, a shiver runs along his spine seeing Kylo like this.

Kylo loathes him. He can’t stand him. _He_ -

Words churn to foam on his tongue but he can’t spit any of them out. Too angry to think about useless things such as words.

He storms right up to Draegan and sharply he strikes.

His big hand fists to clamp around the demon's pale throat. Grabs him rudely by the neck with his jaw swerving, mouth open- Kylo stares at him for a moment. Panting. Black eyes flitting across his face. Draegan makes no move whatsoever to push Kylo off him, he just looks-

Draegan's expression of wariness melts into shock.

Because Kylo pulls him close and kisses him. Their lips touching for the first time in centuries.

Such a violent kiss, it felt as if the room around them was melting. It all crumbled away. This kiss could melt metal. Just look what it had done to Kylo’s flint shard of a heart-

He shoves him back into the wall he’s stood by. He pushes his chest hard enough to break bone, he’s so used to being careful with Iris, he'd forgotten that Draegan won’t shatter. He won’t break. He slips his hand around the bone of his hip, pushes him back and keeps him close at the same time. Grinds their pelvises together and growls when he feels Draegan’s godly sized cock starting to fill out hard in his breeches.

He growls onto his mouth, sucking and biting. Draegan meets him back after a moment of panting in the realisation that this is finally finally finally coming true. Finally happening. Kylo tastes like copper blood and brandy.

He kisses Kylo back and it’s like his soul is reawakened. Charred. Set a flame down in his rotten black bones.

The kiss is so bursting with heat and lust it’s almost painful. Kylo yanks his fingers into the silk white of Draegan's hair and his numerous silver rings are cold against Kylo’s cheek as he cups his face. He digs his hungry teeth into Draegan’s lips. Licks and laps at the tease of cherry wine that bursts sweet on his tongue. They devour each other with this heady lust.

Kylo lets himself fall back into feelings he never knew he still possessed. It felt like that same old agony all over again.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to come yell at us or chat about vampire!kylo this is our - mine and my lovely co author and plot master asnackdriver's - tumblr page. Come and chat with us if you like 🥀🖤🕊https://punkandsnacks.tumblr.com/


	33. Spark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joy Crookes - Since I left you 🥀🥀🥀
> 
> _Lay your body down with me_  
>  _'Cause this is the last time_  
>  _For some reason no surprise_  
>  _Will I see you again?_  
> 

Kylo felt so deeply when Draegan began to pull away.

He felt it hit deep into him. Into spaces he never suspected he still had. Deep jagged rocky places he thought had been caved up when he left all those years ago.

Drageans slender warm touch slipped slowly down from his face, sinking to his neck. He felt the cold rasp of his unyielding silver rings on his fingers. The stark cold of them on his skin. And he feels when they leave.

His heavenly lips are the next to disappear. He pulls back. In the idle space between them - the cramped spaces between lust, love, and longing - they share a panting breath for a moment.

Animosity and lust still pounding his veins. Kylo can taste the tartaric-sweet red wine on those lips, on his breath. Ripe red fruit and the velvet taste he found on the silky bed of his tongue.

Kylo opens his eyes. Finding Draegan’s. Who now cupped his neck. Panting as he nudged his forehead into Kylo’s. He kisses his dark brow before he spoke. And breathily gasped one trembling word from his kiss bitten lips. Where lust was on his lips a moment ago; now it’s gone. And now reality replaces it.

“Iris.” Draegan ushers weakly. His piercing eyes find Kylo’s. Who can read the shame and sadness welling up in this demon. He’s sure his eyes look the same.

“We can’t hurt her like this.” Draegan presses. Shame staining his voice. Shaking his head. Heady lust made everything seem right. And then the haze leaves. Actuality floods real and cold into their intimate moment.

“I know.” Kylo answers. Already looking ashamed of himself. Dark brow pulled down.

Then every touch of Draegan leaves. The hands on his neck. Their fronts crushed together. Draegan steps aside. His clothes rasped silken and shifting against Kylo’s. That brocade red tunic he wore. It looked like a palette of the deepest hues of autumn. Gold and crimson, red and varying shades of saffron and orange folded into the silk threads.

He felt already so cold not being entwined with Kylo. Coolness washes over him and he lets it. He steps back and the night air framed him from the window behind him. His skin flows like pallid flaxen. Hair hanging silky by his neck mussed from Kylo’s touch. Lips as red as any rose. His whole body drowning in blue from the night, and orange from the fire.

“I didn’t come here to seperate the two of you. That has never been my intention.” Dragean says softly. Back to the window.

Kylo’s dismayed expression melts away.

He looks right at him. Spears into him. He spoke with such wisdom in his words- ancient wisdom. His frown of concern deepens.

“Never been...” Kylo repeats. As if he was only just hearing Draegans voice. He was certainly only just understanding him.

He concentrated merely on breathing as he navigated himself to the nearest chair. Fell into it. Scrubbing a hand through his mussed hair. He wets his lips and so many thoughts crowd for attention in his head. His eyes look like wet onyx when he finds Draegan again. Floundering in a realisation that suddenly peppered his thoughts like raining searing arrows. Set his mind aflame.

“ _Never_ been.” He says again. He looks right at Draegan. Who raises his saddened eyes from his feet and looks to Kylo. Vulnerable and bare. He’s been. Torn to pieces and now he’s bleeding.

“All this time.” Kylo swallows. Moist grief sticky in his throat.

A hurricane of reality devastated his mind. It was shattering and ripping apart his head like wet paper. Thoughts came away, torn little shards of it and the truth finally clinging to his tongue.

“That’s why you let me go all those years back. Wasn’t it? You let me leave like that, knowing I would go to her.” Kylo says bluntly. Mouth agape.

Dragean just looks across at Kylo. Stood by the window. Having sunk into the seat of the sill. Onto the cushion on the lip of the stone. Glass and cold blue and stars behind him. And his eyes spoke every word his mouth didn’t need too.

Dragean tilted his head and sighs. He can offer up nothing but truth now. The truth he’s kept so quiet for so long.

Kylo can almost sense the sadness beating off him. How it cloyed in his throat. Lay sad and mournful like a wicked churning cold lake in his chest. Sadness has lived with him so long. It’s formed a part of him. Stabbed into the space between his heart and his lungs like embedded shrapnel. Atleast his sadness was something to feel. The only thing remaining of the vampire he so deeply loved.

“I had once naively hoped we could last until it became time for her, but, fate had a rather different set of ideas.” He explains.

“You watched for her exactly the same as you did for me.” Kylo states.

A meagre smile crosses Draegans lips. He nods gently.

“I’ve protected her as long as she has been alive. Kylo. I’ve kept her from harm and from hurt, to the best of my ability.” He answers.

Kylo sinks his head into his hands. Rubbing his brow with one hand.

“All those senseless things I said to you that first night you walked in here.” Kylo’s chiding himself. Head bowed into his lap. Knees spread wide. Elbow on his kneecap. His hand sloped onto his forehead.

He was so eaten up with guilt and anger he said hurtful things and snarled nasty threats. When all along, Draegan never had one thought about his being here to cause harm to her.

A rustle of silk comes, and his warm hand slotted with rings slides across Kylo’s free hand on his knee. Kylo peers up and sees him stood in front of him. Warm fingers curling around his cold hand. He’s never shied from Kylo’s coldness. Never once.

His touch felt so loving and familiar again. Now his mistrust of the demon had melted away. Feelings and affection began to take its place.

“You weren’t to know.” Draegan tells him kindly.

“You were protecting the love of your life, Kylo. There’s no shame to be had in that action.” He explains. Shifting to move past him and sit on the settee set opposite. His soothing words are spoken like a balm to Kylo’s ragged festering wounds.

He takes the seat and they look at each other. Deeply locking eyes to talk about all these sacred things. All these secrets spilling forth.

“You knew she was coming.” Kylo states.

“Of course I did.” Comes Draegans silky answer.

“You two were predestined. I knew you’d fit like two halves moulded for the other. I’ve known since the beginning that you would. It was just the enduring matter of waiting for her to come.” Draegan comments.

“You loved me knowing I’d leave you? How could you?” Kylo asks. So many questions pouring out his mouth.

“I’ve no soul Kylo. You forget I can bear an awful lot of things.” His jaw suddenly grits together sadly.

“Although you leaving me the way you did-“ He swallowed. Hysteria breaking his usually stoic facade. When he raises his eyes to Kylo he looks heartbroken. A shattered man sits behind the cool disguise of this devil. A devil still dragging his wounded heart behind him.

“It broke me.” He offers honestly. Blue eyes brimming wet and shining. The silver of tears catch amber and glistening like cornelian orange gems sloped into the corner of his cobalt eyes. The marmalade blaze of the copper fire turned Draegan’s complexion into creamy-apricot. The fire blazes in the jewels of his tears.

“I raged for years.” He explains. “You remember the Black Plague?” Draegan asks.

Kylo nods.

“My wrath and heartbreak in situ.” Draegan comments.

“I turned whole countries of people to nothing in compensation for my pain. Entire civilisations to dust. I gathered up so many souls” He tells darkly. He held life in high esteem; but even Draegan had dark spells in his past. Same as his lover.

He couldn’t look back on that period now without revulsion. He regrets that his own pains made him slay so many.

Kylo’s so moved. He’d walked through a thousand cities ripe with death and suffering. He had no idea that his lovers heartbreak over him would have been the cause. That he was the root of such infamy.

He’s so moved. He watches Draegan carefully.

He’s sat there in the half dark, this soulless demon, baring his secrets and his mangled remains of his affections to his first love. It’s obliterating for Kylo to see. Coming from the being he suspected never felt deeply at all.

“You always did use to mistake my coldness for a lack of compassion. I can assure you it’s entirely the opposite.” Draegan insists. Kylo’s also forgetting this man can read every thought that so much as crosses his mind.

“There’s one thing I’m failing to grasp...” Kylo piped up.

“You’ve known Iris her whole life. Guarded her. Kept her safe. You did all that, for me to find her first?” He seeks.

“I orchestrated your finding your way to each other. I gave you a nudge. The rest was entirely up to you both. Once you had each other. You didn’t need my intervening. I had no influence at all on your love for each other. That on its own was so tangible and real. It was all _you_ , and you certainly didn’t need my help with that - save for a few notable exceptions.”

Because Draegan had intervened hadn’t he. In the snow in England when Kylo could’ve taken her. The storm when she got caught out in the rain and he told her how to save her from the fever. In Ranlor forest when Kylo wanted to feed from her. When his fangs were looming an inch away from her neck. He was there to stop the worst happening.

“You think your sudden wish to sail to England and take Hellford park was a merry coincidence or an idle fancy?” Draegan asks Kylo with all knowing mirth in his smile.

He’d planted that thought in Kylo’s head like a seed. Whispered to him in his sleep to go to England. As soft as a summer breeze floating, combing through Ranlor’s trees. Came to him so carefully. Like a wisp of scent or perfume lost on the wind. There one moment. Alive and bright. Gone the next. Told him so gently Kylo fathomed it as a thought entirely of his own design. It slowly grew in his mind until it seemed a prudent idea.

Kylo shook his head. A smile breaks his lips. “And you led me to England knowing precisely _who_ I’d find.”

Draegan confirms with a small nod. Shutting his eyes briefly as he nodded.

“If I’ve learned anything from all my long years walking this realm, Kylo. Is that love cannot be ignored.” He tells wisely.

Laying his feelings bare before him. He’s used to guarding himself so much. His back is breaking with the millennia of strain and sadness weakening his frail glass bones. Kylo had long suspected Draegan’s heartless chest lay empty. Uninhabited. A scattered barren terrain of ice and dust where nothing good ever flourished.

When really? It’s so full of emotion and love for those he cared about. His love fills him up like precious molten metal. Liquid gold. Like the cherry wine be drinks. It’s so important. Sweet heavy-rich, and fulfilling. Now this love is pouring out of him-

“I never fully said anything about the way I left. Why I left-“ Kylo brings up.

“And you didn’t need too.” Draegan interjects. “You weren’t happy.” He comments.

“I don’t think I left because I was unhappy.” Kylo tells him.

“I think I was looking beyond the scope of what we were then. I thought I was being smothered and held back. When that wasn’t it at all. I wanted to see the world that I’d been promised. So that’s what I did.”

Dragean just listens to him. Eyes seeking out those black ocean depths of Kylo’s eyes.

“Nothing you did made me leave, Draegan. It was everything to do with my own selfishness and anger eating me up. My anger was so easy to indulge in. Much simpler to tackle than staying and festering in it.” He supposed.

“I’m sorry to have hurt you.” He offers. The weight of all the years lost between them carried heavy on those words.

“I’m sorry to have lost you.” Dragean says back gently.

“I was enraged. But I don’t believe that I ever truly stopped feeling things for you. I just ran from paying attention to it.” Kylo adds. obviously. Their passionate kiss was evidence of that.

“You gave me this blessed new existence and I wanted to test out the boundaries of it.” He tells.

“All things considered, Kylo. I’d say as painful as the parting was. It was well rewarded.” Draegan smiles. Eluding to the glaringly obvious reason they were now both here;

Iris.

They can both feel it. The way her name lingers beautifully on their tongues. The way she’s not even in the room, and she has such a powerful hold over them both.

“You love her?” Kylo asks Draegan outright. He protected her for all these years of her young life. How could he not feel something for her-

Dragean’s hurtful silence on the subject is every answer he could have given.

“I saw the way you were around her. The way you looked at her. It was like you were looking at something sacred.” Kylo says softly.

He can’t run from this fact now. It’s here and it’s grabbing him by the throat.

“Then you didn’t see how every time I looked to her, I also looked to you right by her side.” He explains, an almost wounded quality to his voice.

Kylo swallows. His mind can’t stop whirring with thoughts.

“You shielded her from your bond with her up until last night-“ Kylo states. Or asks. He’s not entirely sure which.

“You shielded, so she would _see_ me.” Kylo realises. Touched beyond measure. That realisation studs into him sharp and as deep as an arrowhead. Right to the bone that thought cuts him savagely. It pours pain freely into his body to realise all Draegan had given up for his happiness.

“She had a lot to see. A great, good and loyal man.” Draegan explains.

The room rings in silence for a few seconds now those words have left his mouth.

“She was ready to know.” Draegan says openly. His small smile thereafter is a touch mournful.

Kylo’s eyes flash quick to him. Finding the pain still living there in the shaded ocean pools swirled with the dwindling flame in the half. He breaks the eye contact and looks down into his lap. Fiddling with the fine rings on his fingers.

“However, I think now I have intruded on your hospitality for long enough. I fear I’m beginning to rather overstay my welcome.” He starts. Smiling to masquerade the pain.

“You’re not leaving?” Kylo seeks.

“Matter of fact. I am. I’ll take my leave tomorrow night.”

Kylo’s expression lingers somewhere between sadness and confusion. Draegan explains.

“I cannot cause harm to you both. I didn’t come here to separate the two of you. Yours and her happiness is too sacred to me to disrupt. I can leave happily knowing you are contented. I’d only ask you forgive me for my foolishly trespassing here.” He asks.

Old ghosts had wailed so loud to be noticed. Now they can lie silent.

“I just wanted to see the pair of you. I wanted to-“ His words trail away. He doesn’t know what he wanted. The motive he had in coming here has been twisted and malformed. He just wanted a glimpse of what could have been.

“You’d go just like that?” Kylo asks him quietly.

“I think I must.” Comes his answer.

Draegan loves the both of them and he can walk away, so simply. Like it isn’t killing him inside.

Because it is.

It’s desolating him. He doesn’t know how he’ll stand or walk out this room, and continue existing. That kind of mind numbing pain. He’s lived with it so long he’s almost used to it.

After a while, everything stops hurting. Breathing. Eating. Sleeping. Walking. And that’s because the pain has been with him so long, it’s written into everything he does. It never leaves. The pain of losing Kylo grew into him. Became one with his body.

He’s never really known how to live without it.

Draegan’s heart is in shards and that’s no secret. But seeing their love for each other mends the jagged pieces just by a little. Glued the fragments together. He leaves Ranlor a shattered martyr because he will not drive a wedge between the two persons he values more than this whole earth intact.

“When it comes to the happiness of the two people I love? My own feelings do not have any bearing upon the matter.” He insists humbly.

Kylo knows him. He can read the sincerity in his voice. He’s stating the facts so coldly. Because if he thought about it any other way- it would be a gleaming dagger stabbed in his back.

Draegan concludes this as an appropriate end to the conversation. He rises slowly to a stand.

“I believe I shall dine in my room tonight.” He says with some levity.

Kylo looks up at him. A frown crinkling the space between his brows. He doesn’t know what to say. Even less of what to think.

Draegan steps close and cups his face with one large hand. Looking over the man he loves for a moment. The soulful doe-brown eyes. The surety of his nose and his lush lips. _So handsome._ As beautifully devastating as the day he met him. Kylo holds Draegans wrist of the hand that cups his cheek.

“It’s alright, Kylo. This is the way it has to be.” He assures kindly. A glimmer of hope lay in his piercing eyes and his calm smile. He nods and Kylo thinks how conflicted and odd he feels.

He loves his wife more than he loves anything put in this earth. More than _blood_. More than life. So how can his soul still be stitched to Draegans in this way?

His hand slips away after he leans down to press another kiss on his brow. Closing his eyes sadly at the wave of scent on Kylo’s hair. That familiar soap and the wild scents of the pine forest trapped in the bramble black thorns of his lovers hair. He wills the tears he’s desperately holding back not to fall. Wills his determined lower lip to not tremble in sadness.

It’s his destruction all over again. But this time it’s twice as potent. He’s losing two this time.

He goes back to his home knowing how well loved they both are. That’s his consolation after all these years of guarding them both. His work is done. They’ve found each other. It’s time for him to step out of the picture.

“Goodnight.” He finalises. Slipping away. Dragging himself out of Kylo’s touch.

Away to retake up his life of solitude. He’s so good at being alone. It comes naturally to him. Any hopes he had, he lets them die. After all, he’s a demon. He’s good at slaughtering innocent things without a qualm.

He can kill all his hopes that had made a home in his chest these past few days. They were naive hopes. He was wrong to have indulged them so with thoughts of harmony and peace from his being here.

Kylo feels his fingers fall off Drageans pale wrist. He watches him move away. Heading for the open door and walking away out of it. His hair swaying on his back with his willowy walk. He listens until his treads ring from noise into silence.

The first time, Kylo had left him. It seemed sadly fitting that this time, Dragean is the one leaving him. Leaving _them_ -

Kylo’s lost as to what to feel.

~

In another part of the castle, up in a scarlet walled bedchamber, Iris is just stepping back into her and her husbands rooms, fresh out her bath. Wrapped up in another cotton robe and nightgown. The previous one was so stained and bloodied.

Kylo had told her to go and make ready for dinner. But she had no intentions now of going back downstairs. Getting dolled up in a pressed silk gown and jewels seemed a thankless task for tonight. She’s too exhausted.

Her limbs are still soft and supple. Indolent from her bath. She feels the slight dull ache of fire at her joints as she moves. Flaring up her thighs and her back as she moves. Her courses helped to

truly drain her of all little energy she did possess.

All she really wants to do for tonight is languish in their great big mahogany bed for a long night of deep and blissful sleep.

Kylo and Draegan will have to dine without her tonight. She suspects she won’t be missed. They’re getting along better now. They’ll drink wine and dine together over a sumptuous haunch of a succulent roast and likely indulge in a brandy after dinner. Sat by the fire with the hounds.

She pads gently across the end of the bed. Going to her vanity she reaches for her brush and takes it gently through her hair. Listening to nothing but the soft silky scratch of her tangled damp hair passing through the bristles.

She glances preoccupied out the window as she performs her idle task. Watches the midnight blue night cast over the forest. A wind calmly whips at the tree tops.

Funny to remark upon not so long ago, when she first saw this landscape and her home, it was shrouded in thick white snow. Masked under a blanket of winter. Now it was as if there was no trace of it whatsoever. The forest floor is crisp and damp. Pine needles all mushed with leaves and mud. The trees are giant black-green and towering. Not even a hint of frost remained speckled on their branches. Spring looms closer and brighter with every day.

Spring will make this forest a different plain to the white sparkling land of ice it had once been.

Draegan had been right. She too suspects that soon, bulbs will start to snap up under the rich soil. Bursting out the nutty-brown earth with their colours and nectar. The rich soil warmed by nourishing sunshine. The lake to the east will cease to be a frozen sheet of blue-grey. It will be a thawed gathering of water. Laying like a mirror shard under the bright cheering sun. With light slipping like golden liquid over the gentle ripples of it.

She can’t wait to see it. She’s looking forwards even more to taking a stroll through that serene wilderness with their distinguished pale guest.

As hard as she tried to set it aside. She couldn’t put away how his seeing them in the forest had made her feel. The sordid revelation of it all.

Something quiet and tame inside her hinted at it being something more. Something she struggled to fathom. Dragean and his kinship with her feels so intimate to her in a way she can’t grasp. It feels natural.

When she knew it was his eyes on her as Kylo took her - she shivered even more recalling how it affected her. Traces of bursting pleasure slither along her spine. Sharp and spreading. Raising the hairs on her neck in bliss. It was as if he was in front of her. Kissing her neck and making her shiver as Kylo was fucking her.

Her husband had been right. She did like the way he saw her. The way he watched them both writhe in pleasure. She recognised it wasn’t a normal thing to feel about someone whose virtually unknown to her. If he were any other man; Kylo would’ve torn him to pieces for the crime of glimpsing them intimately joined.

She was wrong to think of her husbands ex-lover in such a way. Draegan had never given her any indication of love. Only fondness. She felt like an interloper on something greater between the two of them. Affections and feelings that weren’t finished yet. They had to make their peace and she understood that. Their history was peppered with pain and uncertain endings.

She personally knows how very agonising uncertain endings can be. She would not deny them both the cathartic chance to heal. Things like that can so fester in the mind.

She sets her brush down and puts a drip of lavender oil on her wrists and the pulse points her neck. She likes the way it scents on her cotton pillow. She can tell when she moves across to her husband in her sleep. Her pillow starts to smell like brambles. She knows she crossed into his territory. He doesn’t mind a great meaty arm will catch her and hold her close. Sling over her back and drag her nearer.

She closes the drapes on the cold blue night. Snuffs out the candles around the walls and on the bedsides. Lets the fire blaze away in the half to subdued licking flames. She’s warm enough in their bed with the heavy velvet covers and sheets. Still dewy and pink from her bath.

She sighs gratefully as she peels back the covers and slips under them. The heavenly mattress swallows her up as she climbs atop it. Gets settled in. Snug under the covers. Warming her cold toes. She feels exhausted but she’s not tired enough to drift away to the cavern of sleep as of yet.

She twists around and reaches for her correspondence on her bedside. She’ll skim through the inked words of her family until sleep comes to claim her. She smiles a little when she sees the little dried petals and buds scattered across the pages.

They spill over the bed where she lays. She rolls on her side and tucks her knees under her. A tendril of a dry pink Foxglove. And the scattered dots of bluebell. Like lost little drips of rain. She twirls the flowers in her hand. Smiles at the ghostly remainder of its scent. Chalky and dry. Lost on the cloth like paper where it had been pressed.

She brings the letter closer and reads through its familiar words once again. Tracing a fingertip to the slanted loop of her fathers quill and the indent it made on the page in the inky path he scribed. She could almost hear the faint scrape of it dancing across the paper.

She can see him in her minds eye, hunched over in his chair, writing this letter in his study. Back bowed to the door. Glasses draping off his nose. Ignoring the shrill screams of her sisters doing something silly fair off in the house. He’d wince and shut the door to drown out their noise. Enclosing himself in the sturdy comfort of his rooms. Not to be disturbed as he works.

It makes her feel such a lance of longing spear into her heart. She had to clutch the letter close. Over the very full beating space of her heart. It was as if she could reach out and embrace them. As if she was back as Westwell again. Him sat there in his wrinkled cravat and his old faded waistcoat. She could imagine the feel it under her palms as she embraces him.

She thought about it often. It has lived in her mind. Shuffled to some far back corner where she rarely goes. Memories and thoughts of it all faded now. Vibrant wallpaper bleached by the sun. Set back.

She can just remember the way the floorboards creak on the landing outside her room as she walks over them. The smell of soap in the foyer marred with beeswax polish on the walnut surfaces of their furniture. The way it all enmeshed into the sooty charred smell of the fire hanging in the air. That was the memory she clutched close.

Of her slippers treading the parlour floor when she’s putting herself directly between one of Flora and Posy’s screaming matches. Shaking her head and retreating to her seat by the window to carry on her embroidering.

She tries hard everyday to not let herself forget anything about it all. That great old faded reel of her life. She collects it and unwinds it sometimes. Like cotton thread off a spool. Snippets of it that she wants to remember. She lets everything else fade.

Sitting in the chilly alcove of her window at night, reading by candlelight in her nightgown with her favourite golden shawl folded over her shoulders. Hair raggedly tamed in a messy plait for bed.

Out walking in the early crunching frost of an autumnal English wood. Admiring the call of the wood pigeons and the cry of the starlings chirping at dawn. Looking up at the sun sore sign through the canopy of the orange and gold trees. Framed by a blue sky. Picking flowers to dry in the mild summers. Sun bleaching through her gauzy cotton petticoat skirts as she watches baby deers in the woods scampering alone on spindly legs with their mother. The scent of bluebells in her nose. Their darling blue colour in malformed dappled woodland shade.

The way Flora and Posy would come and hug her before bed sometimes. Bony little arms squeezing her back, and tawny and auburn tendrils of hair in her face as they apologise for screeching at her as she was caught in the middle of their argument. The real weight of their affections clasped in their warm little hugs. Posy’s violet water perfume and the cotton pink of Floras dress. Under her hands. In her face. The scents of the little pests drawing near.

The way Iris would share an all-knowing glance with her father when mother once again said something trite. He’d fold down the corner of his broadsheet newspaper and roll his hazel-tawny eyes at her. Before his face and his crows feet crinkled into his smile. She’d smirk underhandedly too.

It hadn’t been a bad life really. Not at all. Certain aspects of it she wishes were different. Some she wished would never change in her mind.

Some day she’d like to see them again. Her father and her sisters. Fall back into easiness with the people who love her. When everything is said and done. Family really was precious. But she’s also coming to learn there were more definitions to that word that she first suspected.

Like Kylo, Ravi Jomar, and Mrs Jones. In their own way; they’re an odd sort of family. Dysfunctional, but they thrive in caring for and loving each other.

Mrs Jones was telling Iris the other day about Kylo’s looking after Ravi after they sadly lost his mother. Night and day he’d watched over the little boy as if he were his own brood. How they’d all banded together through thick and thin to raise that darling boy. Struggling with their own lives in tow too. And here, they are all accepted and cherished.

Iris had learnt rather quickly that was and never had been a Mr Jones. Their dear housekeeper used her own name and had given her life into service of this family. She was a maid and she was contented to be so. There had been a sweetheart once, she told Iris, but war and then disease took him from her. She remained staunchly herself her whole life long. And no one censured her decision. Iris admires that. Strong women so seldom had opportunity to flourish. Censured for not marrying or doing their duty and starting a family. Mrs Jones was happy as was. That’s so admirable to her mind.

Some crueler people might deign to call it a broken family.

A single widower father, and his son. An old maid and a hulking great vampire. Such fierce love bloomed in all the oddest of spaces and disparities between them and their various genders and ages. They have different religions, beliefs, walks of life. But under this roof, they are all one brood. One loyal clutch of people. It’s terribly heartening.

Iris finishes one of her letters and goes onto the next. Sorting through her flowers and letters. Before long the bed near her is littered with them. A meadow of white covers dotted with petals and sprigs of native English flora. Iris sets her head down on her pillow to read for the thousandth time about the lavender and peach silk gowns Posy proudly brought herself. And how she’s dallying in flirtation with a very wealthy viscount.

Iris reads about Posy’s very florid descriptions of his debonair beauty, and his dark hair and smouldering eyes. She gets to the bit about Posy flattering his immaculate coat and shapely turn of his dashing ankles when he dances, and sleep closes heavily on her. Draped softly over her eyes and she slumbers against the pillow as the letter falls from her slackened fingers.

This is how Kylo finds her; dead to the world and letters and dried flowers scattered all around like a summer breeze off a meadow blew them there. Like an offering bed of nature surrounding her. His mind makes a path to sleeping beauty surrounded by her thorns and brambles. He smiles. Corner of his lips curling up.

Awakened by the kiss of her prince. His heart sank because he wished he had half the princes gainly qualities. As it is, he’s the monster that fairytales often speak of slaying.

He shuts the bedchamber door after him. Slipping inside. Silently moving across the carpet to her bedside. He crouched and scooped up the dainty little papery petals. One by one plucks them into his big hands and deposits them back safe where she kept her letters.

He kneels and diligently picks up the flowers. Knowing full well how much each petal means to her. He refolds the letters and sets them safe in the small antique silver box set on her bedside. When he opens the lid, stale flowers ebbs out at him. The scent of lost petals and dried nectar. He slips everything tucked back safe where it belonged. He knew how she cherished her letters from home.

He shut the lid of the box with her treasures safely boxed inside. Slides his hand off the lid and turns back to his sleeping wife. He looks over her for a moment. Face pulled into a gentle expression of concern as he drags the covers over her shoulders.

She shuffled on her pillow. Muzzily groaning and her head lolls to one side. Hair mushed and curled behind her head. She unknowingly shifts around to where he is now crouched by the bed. Facing him. One hand tucked under her cheek.

Kylo watches her in this moment of serenity. His mind harps back to a time when he would watch her like this at Westwell. Keeping her safe. Where she’d isolate herself in sadness and fall to sleep with tears drying on her skin. He’d be there to wipe them away and kiss her brow and fill her with happy thoughts to take to her rest.

He sighs as he lifts a tendril of dark straying hair off her cheek. Moving it gently away. “You are so well loved, Iris.” He states gently. His thumb finds its way to smooth across the pillow of her cheek.

“Not only by me. But by him too.” He tells her. His voice keeping the same gentle pitch. “You’ve captured the both of us little dove.”

He leans up and presses and kiss to her sleeping brow. Breathes her in and wraps an arm around her as she slumbers. In her dreams she swore she could feel the icy tinge of his lips hitting her skin. A little whisper of a cold vampire kiss soaked into her head.

“I thought he came here to hurt me. Or worse, try and hurt you. But he came here in spite of those things.” He kisses her brow again.

“He could see how much we meant to each other. All that would happen if I went to England and found you. He knew all along we were intended for one another.”

He shifts over her and climbs onto the bed, fully dressed. Wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. Dropping another lush-lipped kiss on her shoulder. Nuzzling the cotton and the smell of her soap lays gentle on her skin. Lavender too. Their bed smells like lavender because of her. He settled down and rests his head close by hers.

“He sacrificed and hid his influence away for years so you’d see me first. So I could have all _this_ and he stays watching on from the shadows.” He says. His voice trembling as he strokes her hair again.

“How can you repay someone for such a thing? For giving you your entire life’s worth of happiness.” He asks. But he knows no one is listening. He squeezes his eyes closed and shuffled even closer. He needed the weight of her in his arms. The reminder of her closeness and her heat. And the comfort only she can provide for him.

She’s carved out a space for him, the dark beast, in her pretty wildflower soft heart. She saw goodness and loyalty in him on days when he could barely raise his eyes to meet his reflection in the looking glass.

And Draegan helped set the stage for this whole thing.

Kylo settled down to sleep. Clutching his wife close. He kisses her again. His brain awash with thoughts and feelings that just won’t leave.

He listens to the lullaby of Iris’s pulse until eventually he drifts away too. The rioting affections and thoughts in his head quiet long enough for rest to sneak in and take him.

When Iris wakes the next morning, birdsong chips at her ears. And she twists around the find the sheets behind her vacant. The rumpled press of his body is the only remainder of him. She twists around and smooths her hand over the space where he’d lain.

She felt him behind her. The shift of his body dipping into the mattress behind her. The cavity of him in the bed was so great she often slopes inwards to where he lays. Drawn to him even in sleep.

She vaguely heard him speaking to her. She didn’t register any of what he said. But she knew he was there. Her bedrock of a husband. Curled up behind her to sleep like a great cold slab of stone.

She blinks the dregs of sleep out her bleary eyes. Eyes cracked to see a vertical slice of pale day break through the curtains. The half scarlet dark is dozy and dim. It makes the room a lush place to lounge. All she wants to do is slip back into sleep and doze in this warm bed under those velvet covers. But she knows there are matters on her desk to which she must pay attention. She rouses herself.

She unfolds the bedclothes and shivers at the cruel cold that snuck in her muggy state and pricked needles up her spine. She stands and uncurls her muscles and limbs. Staggering slowly to the window, her joints creak and crack as she moves. She rubs her neck and draws the drapes. Shaking the heavy things out to set them straight where they drag on the floor.

She looks out across the forest. The view is ever changing with the weather. It looks more like a spring day today. The woods are alive with the bright cacophony of trees shushing in the wind. The birds. The mountains standing cold and distant like squat guards. She could look over this view a million times and it would always be different to her.

She spied a large black shape moving through the trees in the far beyond. A rider in black and white atop it. A slash of red around his neck with one of his wine coloured cravats. She smiles to herself seeing that Kylo has taken himself out for one of his early morning rides with Erland.

He likes the sting of the wind in his cheeks and in his hair. Running through his wild locks like cold fingers. He likes how it gets his heart pumping as he rides as fast as Erland’s legs can manage. A dark blur passing under the trees.

He always aches from the cold. His bones ring with it sometimes. His dead state can barely remember having veins in him to hold and carry life. Candlelight barely sears his skin. Rain doesn’t sting. It all scrapes at him so gently he barely feels it.

But now, here, in those woods he tips his head up to the sky and feels the sun splash on his cheeks and even though he’s dead- he’s never felt more alive. More closely connected to life. Sun was supposed to burn creatures like him. Some do. But he’s so ancient it doesn’t carve into him much. He finds solace in the holy fire of its blaze.

Iris leaves the window and takes to her getting ready for the day. She summons Rose for a cup of tea and bath. Drinks down a cup of strong amber assam tea as she chooses her gown for the day. A sultry and dark midnight blue cotton. With a white petticoat lace trim around the scooping neck. When her bath is ready, Iris shed’s her gown and steps below the warm silk of the water.

Rose had used dried eucalyptus leaves and lavender oil. The scent was heavenly. Green and botanic, and a floral burst of the plain flora following it. Iris rubs fine soap over her sleepy limbs as Rose lays out her things on the bed. A feat she didn’t mind doing herself most days- but Rose sometimes beat her too it.

She gets out the water - reluctantly - and dried and slips on her chemise. Rose ties her stays at the back and she helps her Lady slip on her petticoats and gown. They are gong to attempt to tease Iris’s uncooperative hair into a pleasing style. Twisted away from her face and pinned into romantic curls. Iris hates sleeping in paper bows. They don’t work so well on hair as thick as hers.

Her mind wanders as she sits at her vanity and Rose brushes out her curls and gets to her magic with her pins. Iris is casting her eye over the items set on her vanity top. Her perfume bottles. Various ribbons laid out that she used in her hair. Tangled in a heap by her glass scent bottle.

She can’t help but look at the Nettoor Petti jewellery box. Sat at the far end of her little narrow table. It truly was a beautiful piece. As lovely and ancient as she person who had gifted it to her for a wedding present.

She reaches out a hand and strokes her hand down the flat sheer veneer of the walnut wood. That burnt tawny colour marbled with marmalade orange on the polished surface. She runs her fingertip over the gold gilding around the clasp and the latch. The joining of it on the corners. So beautifully ornate. A sacred relic of India, Jomar had told her. A symbol of luck and wealth. She balances her finger on the sharp edge of the corner.

Her mind wanders over to the demon who’d bestowed it to her. She thinks of the way he smiles at her. Such serenity in his eyes. The way he towers like a calm willow tree.

She can’t deny she does enjoy having him around. He makes her feel- such a rich churning of things she can’t put her finger on any one part of it. He’s so learned and fascinating. She feels oddly cherished in his presence. Flattered someone in all his timeless elegance chose to spend time around her. Even if they were just talking a stroll through the woods talking about books or the weather. She feels like Draegan soaks up every word she speaks.

He flatters her, compliments her. And it drips from his mouth like honey off a silver spoon. She likes listening to him talk too. She sat in the other day on one of his lessons with Ravi. He was so patient and rewarding to the young boy going through the book with him. Explaining. He answered every question, didn’t grow incensed or sharp with him. Iris hadn’t realised she’d been staring at him until he glanced up. She turned back to her novel with a blush set hot in her cheeks.

It was so much harder to concentrate on reading knowing he was looking at her.

She piped up asking Ravi about the royalists and the parliamentarians. A distraction. His favourite subject of the moment. She felt Draegan’s eyes calmly piercing across at her. The subtle smile on his lips intended for her.

It’s the way he always stands when he comes into the room - Kylo does the same. They were men raised in the ages of chivalry and she’s so pleased to see they continue on in that politesse.

He’d bloomed dead roses for her. Just to see her smile. Brought her tea when she was ailing. He’d turned danger quite literally into dust to see her kept safe. Her heart is sold so fondly to him. She she can not decipher in what way- be it friendliness. Or something deeper.

She doesn’t delve too far into those feelings. She keeps them walled up. Locked under bars and she never pays attention to them. No matter how she knows each new smile and look he gives her adds more into the enclosure she’s built up. By now the walls are bursting full to capacity.

She’s not unhappy. But she knows she can’t indulge whatever her feelings for him want. She won’t go where they’re trying desperately to lead her. She’ll shut away that vein of thinking and never pay attention to it again.

She has Kylo. She has such a wonderful, handsome and loving husband. She won’t be the kind of fickle silly girl to have her head turned by another man. No matter if he’s an alluring and attractive demon or not. That was her resolve on the matter.

She lets her mind sail away elsewhere. Rose is putting the finishing touches to her hair. Tucking all the flyaways and curls into the pins. Making it look sleek and silky and sophisticated. Defined with the romantic curls that were all the rage.

“I’m done, Mi’lady.” Rose tells her mistress.

Iris seems so intently set on stroking the rich wood jewellery box in front of her. Entranced.

“Mi’lady?” Rose asks again. Her petite voice snaps Iris out her Reverie. She catches her maids sweet almond eyes in the reflection.

“I apologise I was miles away. It looks wonderful Rose. Where would I be without your expert hands?” Iris smiles warmly. And she means every syllable of compliment she can give.

Rose smiles. Ducking out the room after giving Iris a pleased curtsey. She smiles after her darling maid as she softly shuts the door in her wake. The silence seems to reign so heavy after the door is closed. She pushes herself up and goes to look out the window. Light washing over her pensive face as she looks at the mountains and the sky; shes only half here.

Iris is eaten up with being elsewhere.

She’s in the woods again. On the night Kylo went feral. Being taken on the floor like a dog. Locked tight to her animalistic husband.

She’s been back to those woods so many times in her head.

Letting those haunting white frost eyes rake over her body as her husband took her. She remembers feeling shocked and wanting to shy away from those probing white discs. Like the cold moon. What was he doing there?

Her heart deflated in her chest thinking of it. He can’t possibly have been there for her sake. He was there to see Kylo. _Of course he was._ She’s seen the tense pain and the trepidation in the looks they shared.

The silences abridged between them, that really weren’t silences at all. They ring, shriek, and burst with everything that isn’t being said. How many years have they been apart? Unspoken closure festers between them like a gnawing wound. It could only go so long being left ignored and untreated.

They were immortal lovers. An empty grey sadness, something that feels like foolishness, nibbles at her belly thinking how Draegan had to put up with her. When really, he was only here for Kylo. She had been an annoyance, a courtesy pressed upon him. And he doesn’t want her or her kinship at all.

But then that makes the least sense of all-

Her mind rakes over every action of his. Every smile. Every comfort offered in friendship. She can’t help wondering if it’s genuine. Or a clever ruse to get on her good side. That ugly grey foolishness is now as rotten black as molasses low in her belly. Churning and sickening.

She takes a deep sigh. The man is so mysterious to her. Maybe she’ll never know.

She turns to look at her vanity. Arms crossed over her chest. Not entirely sure why. But she walked slowly over to it. It felt like it was calling her name.

She stops when she’s stood in front of it. A weight of a million thoughts crossing her mind sharp as steel blades. Slashing and slicing in every which direction. Each new clashing strike of them crossing rings painful in her head. Each time she goes to follow a strand of coherent thought, it frays and knots up like thread.

She lays her fingers on the smooth box again. Running down the smooth slope of the lid; she lifts it and opens it. It creaks and that scent of spices and old silk floods out. She gazes inside;

It’s then her entire world shifts-

She’s put very few personal trinkets in this box. A couple of clasp bracelets and a necklace. But now her mouth gapes because there nestled on a string of pearls she owned, is something she doesn’t know how it could possibly be there.

It’s her grandmothers broach. The gold cannetille oval one. Inlaid with half pearls and emeralds studded all over.

It’s not terribly big. It sits well on the palm of her hand. The gold is tarnished now. Rubbed from years of use. The pearls are dull and misshapen. And the emeralds have lost their lustre.

Her mouth gapes. Confused gasps leave her. This can’t be it- she’s losing her mind. It’s a different one. It must be. This is some bizarre trick. Kylo left it there a present for her by pure chance.

She hurriedly grabs and picks it up and turns it over. On seeing the in initials scored on the soft metal. She clasps her free hand over her mouth.

She stumbled backwards, numbed. She knocked over an end table. A vase and books thud loud to the carpets. Flying across the scarlet Aubusson rug. Clattering away. She barely registers the fall.

The back of her feet hit the armchair by the fire. She stumbled and ended up dropping to her trembling knees. They couldn’t support her anymore. She’s collapsing crumpled on the carpet. That broach gripped in her hands. She lands and the breath is thudded right out of her.

She thinks she might faint.

If she thought her mind was reeling before, it’s practically unreadable now. Things that remained hidden, finally they come creeping into the light.

She knows Draegan. She’s always known him.

Only she’d concluded long ago that he was a dream. A gentle spectre conjured up by her lonely mind. A seraphic man with hair as white as starlight. _Him_.

She wondered once how a stranger could seem familiar to her. It’s because he had never been that.

He’d been there in her most isolated and sad scattered moments. When mother ripped her drawings out her hands and cast them in the fire; making her concentrate on her embroidery instead. She’d gone to her bedroom that night snivelling tears and feeling no joy whatsoever. Feeling that everything she did in life would be picked apart, and criticised.

Draegan was there. He’s the one who knelt by her bed in her dark. Soothed away her tears, kissed her brow and took her hand. Stroked hair out her face and let her know she wasn’t a failure. She was a capable artist and she shouldn’t let her mother convince her otherwise. Not to a hobby that brings her such happiness.

When she sits at the root of a sturdy tree in the woods to draw the bluebells in spring. He’s there with a hand touching the bark, stood behind where she’s sat, watching her sketch, wrapping curling himself around the tree to see her, and to smile gladly at her peace.

He was there after she got trussed up and carted off to another ball in a pinching gown and flogged out in pearls and jewels to try and impress young suitors. She’d never danced before. She’s sat there all night and not one of the young men approached and asked her to dance. The twenty year old wallflower. One of those nasty boys even refused to dance with her when he saw she was without a partner. He felt it below him to offer her his hand in the next.

When a nasty flock of girls spat venom behind her back about how faded her dress was and how poor her jewels looked. Iris felt like bursting into tears. She tried to resolve herself not to let her lip tremble. She was trying her best to be buoyant and everything seemed to sink her.

She remembers Posy and Flora linking arms with her and spiriting her away from the foul girls. They both talked very loudly and openly about how nasty money could make people. Giving little Ashton dagger eyes at the group. Iris was thankful for their poisonous rebuttal. But her mood didn’t improve.

She didn’t pride herself as a vain girl who needed masculine attention. But still the lack of it stung her heart that night. She watched prettier girls get approached make their numerous turns and she feels wretched.

So she’d hid in a dark alcove of an unused hallway in the house for the rest of the night. Sat in the indigo velvet June dark with the summer moon beaming through the window. She perched herself on a window alcove. Glass cold at her back. And she sobs bitter wracking sobs as she sat on her own. Not being missed by anyone. She was never missed by anyone.

Her gloves wet through to the touch from the amount of tears she’d blotted with them. Wet white satin clingy on her skin, dull pearls, a stupid ugly dress draping her, and listening her own cries echo back to her, there in the dark.

Even then she hadn’t been alone. He’d cupped her head in both hands and pressed a kiss to her brow upon that sad cobalt night. Rested his nose against her hair. Told her how much she will be loved by him when the time is right. _Don’t cry little spark._

Mother snapped her ear off the whole coach ride home. Told her she was a disgrace to the family. Iris looked out the window at the pale harvest moon. It reminded her of him.

That night, in her room. Draegan taught her how to dance.

Her guardian angel; He told her how all those foolish boys were not worth any measure of one of her cares.

She thought it was a dream. She thought she imagined standing with him in her floating white nightgown as he guided her into dancing with a gently encouraging smile.

Memories come thick and fast, she can barely stop them. They flood into her like a river unending.

When she was not a lot younger, can remember it was a day she’d decided to go for a ride on one of their farm horses. A chestnut mare.

Iris had made her mind to ride their horse through the woods. She was cantering along. Haring at quite a speed. When a cluster of pigeons scattering sharply out a bush in front of her made the mare rear and buck. Disjointing Iris from where she sat side saddle. She was thrown.

She should’ve broken her back from such a fall. Yet she gets away with barely a scratch. Barely even a sprained wrist. It was an anomaly. Now she knows why that is.

She can remember sitting there in the moist autumn earth. Floor crushed with sticky mud and paper dry golden and saffron leaves from the oak trees. Her wrist ringing with white-hot pain and he was there too. He stayed with her until help came. Her horse had bolted. And he didn’t leave her on her own. She thought she’d hit her head. That she was going dribbling raving mad, imagining a glowing white haired angel coming to her rescue. One with kind hands and a obliterating smile. One that smelt like jasmine and sea air.

Now she knows how not ridiculous it all is. It’s as if her whole life she’d been behind a stage curtain and now it has been lifted. Blinded and kept sheltered in her ignorance. She can see what lays before her now. She can finally see it all.

And now this- this little piece of her family past sits impossibly real in her hands.

It was her grandmothers. On her fathers side. Grandmama Emblyn Ashton. She was the kindest woman alive. Mother had hated her deeply. Hated how she doted on all the girls.

Caroline told her girls that their fathers mother was common stock. Not decent. Not good enough. She forbade her from seeing them often. Stating it was too expensive by a coach to travel down to her Devonshire cottage by the sea to bring her grandchildren to meet with her. She said they’d didn’t have room for her at Westwell.

Iris remembers the place Emblyn lived. It existed in her mind still. For it was such a dearly sweet cottage. A place in her childhood she felt happy and still thought well of.

White thick walls, a saggy brown thatched roof. Tiny rectangular slots of sunken shrinking windows. Like the rain and the sea spray had shrivelled the house up. The window frames were painted the colour of bluebells.

Iris remembers the climbing white rose outside the window. Clung to the house. The wickedly bright painted blue front door. Salt and sun dried seaweed crept at every nook and cranny in that house off the foamy sea breeze. Out of every window, Iris could stand on her young tiptoes with her hands on the widow ledge and she’d try and spy the sea. She remembers helping the woman make the wonderfully traditional recipe of star-gazey pie.

Grandmama lived by herself since grandfather died, and she was perfectly contented by it. Sitting by her stove of a stormy night in her rocking chair, with the wind howling and tearing at the roof. Bread baking in the blazing oven. The clack of the runners on her chair as she swayed there on the flagstone floor warmed by the roaring amber half, embroidering or knitting. Humming an old Cornish lullaby that she’d taught them all to sing as girls.

Emblyn was an old woman sustained by the pretty seaside scape she lived in. She had peony white hair. Always thrust messily into a matrons cap. She had a craggy face that was filled with more lines than a map. Bony hands and a nobbled frail body. But her smile was warm and she made everyone in her cottage feel welcome. She called Iris and the girls her little darlings.

Emblyn could walk for miles upon miles on the beaches she loved. Picking up pebbles and shattered shells bashed by the waves, and always insisting each one was special. She liked frying whole pilchard fish she’d caught herself on a line in the harbour, and making her own jam from the fruits of her garden. She was always in an apron that she was ready to get muddied digging in her garden, or shoes that could get crusted in gritty sand from the beach.

She was a rambling adventuress who did what she pleased and never let a thing about life scare her. And was the warmest person who gave the most encouraging hugs in existence.

She’d died a week shy of Iris’ twelfth birthday.

She’d sent her eldest granddaughter a box of brilliant blue paints made from seashells. Iris couldn’t touch the beautiful thing. Everyone but mother had cried for a week after her passing. She wrote father a letter in her will to be sent after the event of her death; he sobbed reading it when it came. She told him she’d have died listening or looking at the sea. And that she’d have been happy to go with that peace.

The golden broach had been promised

to Iris in her will. The one only fine thing she’d owned. And she wanted her darling Iris to have it. She deserved something fine.

Mother had snapped when she saw Iris had pinned it to the front of her black frock. She tore it off and snarled how such fine things weren’t fit for children. Iris had never seen it again. Mother had hidden it. Told her not to yearn for something she didn’t deserve. She never asked about it again.

It encapsulated the love and memories of someone who was special to her. If Emblyn had known about how Caroline had treated Iris, she would’ve had several strongly worded things to say to her daughter in law.

She wonders how on earth Draegan had managed to get this-

She looks down at the beautiful thing sparkling in her hand. She rubs her thumb over the emeralds. She remembers Grandmama’s smile. It takes her back to thinking of someone she loved.

It makes her know exactly what Draegan felt for her. And it wasn’t tame indifference. It was soul scorching love.

 _He loves her._ And she can’t deny herself the facts any longer- she clutches the broach so tight in her hand the metals and the jewels dig red bites into her palm.

She looks up to the doorway as she staggers to her feet. She feels drunk. Numb. She can’t hardly feel how she moves to grip the door handle and thrust her body through the open door desperately.

She felt her feet pound the marble floors. The vibrations racking through her ankles. Her skirts whipping back as she moves quick through the castle. Her cotton train flies behind her and she hardly feels how she moves. She just feels the tumult of her chest. Of knowing all that this demon has done for her. All he’d felt for her-

She pants as she hauls up her skirts and stabs her feet into every step of the stairs up to the turrets. She runs along hallways, slippers clinging onto her feet for dear life. Her chest feels too crushed. Her heart can’t get a chance to slow down. She runs to find him. Her lungs shrivel and pound sharp, protesting dryly with the strain she’s putting on them. Panting for breath that won’t catch her up.

She comes to the landing of his rooms. The attic turret stairs just ahead. The frozen stag on the stair landing behind her. Glassy black eyes of it watch her coldly. She steps to his bedchamber. The door is thrown open wide. The bed is made. Pressed nearly like a waveless blue sea.

His trunks are open. Luggage spilled across the floor with items and clothes packed within. He’s leaving.

Her heart falls out her body. Falls to her feet. A mangled, twisted broken thing laying before her now. Utterly wrung out. _He can’t be leaving. Not now._

She spins around. She has to find him. She walks opposite to the book room.

They’d spent some time in here. She’d asked him the other today about some old texts he had and he gladly spared hours to help her find some that might interest her. They’d drank red red pomegranate tea and talked about books for as long as they wanted. It was bliss.

She peers into his rich library room, and there she finally finds him. He’s facing away from her. Wearing great spilling velvet blue coat. His hair shimmering the colour of pearl down his back. He’s reaching up to slide a big gold and brown leather book back on the high shelf. The usual grey breeches and spotless suede boots up to his calves. The rings on his fingers catch the light in a hard glint that twinkles out to her where she stands. That amber one is glazed in warm sunlight.

She’s stuck beyond the doorcase.

She looks on him now with her eyes wide open. Open to all he means. All he’s done. Kylo called him a savage. A monster. She can’t agree. He is savage but not in that awful way. He’s so devastating to be around. Especially now she knows. All he’s put aside and sacrificed. Protected. Cherished.

Loved-

The thought brings tears springing sharp to her eyes. She watches him stand almost still. Body still facing the shelf. Lowering his hand slowly he turns over his shoulder to see her. He knew she was there. He always knows. How could he not. The love and he has for her fills his every waking moment.

When those piercing blue eyes find her skulling beyond the doorway. Panting and trying to dispel the furious beat of her wild heart. His lips lift in a smile.

“Hello little spark.” He greets her. She almost trembles from the sound of his voice. That nickname too.

She finds the scraps of her bravery, and steps into the room. “How did you?” She asks holding the treasured little item in her hand. Mind reeling and unravelling in the face of this whole thing.

“She was wrong to keep it from you.” He says. Looking down to her hand. Turning to face her. Slowly twisting his body around and stepping across. The room lay vast and spreading before them. But there may aswell be nothing but air. Clouds. Mist. She can’t see anything but him. His eyes. His smile. His face that she’s finally seeing clearly. She’s _his_ little spark.

She blinks looking down at the gold thing in her palm. “You know what this means to me.” She says. Tears dribbling over her cheeks. Darting salty drips slip down quick. He aches to take those years away. As he’s always done.

“I do.” He confirms as he steps closer. When she looks up. He’s stood with his hands by his sides.

“Why did I never _see_ you?” She begs. Almost hurt that she’d been kept from noticing him. He tilts his head. Her sadness makes him weak.

He gets close enough to touch. And dares to wipe away a tear that fell over her cheek. More land in blotted dark black stains on her dress. Her chest trembles with breath when his warm fingers catch across her cheek. He’s blurred to her now by her crying.

“I didn’t allow you to. I can pass unseen if I wish. And because I knew all along that Kylo was intended for you. It’s how I was to able to let him leave me. Knowing he would come to you gave me hope.”

Her mouth gapes. He takes away more tears with his thumbs. Now her eyes are shining brimming full of silver. Wet grey howlite stone as she blinks up at him sadly. Swallowing down her choking throat so she can speak again. Her lower lip quivers in sadness.

“How could you bear it?” She asks. Voice cracking. A sad smile pulls at his lips.

“Because I knew Kylo would love you more than anything put on this earth.” He answers simply.

“When I asked you if you had anyone special in mind-“ She stumbles and stammers over the thought.

He nods. Eyes gazing deep into hers.

“You’ve always been there. This whole time. You’ve been there for me. You’ve been there whilst I’m with him.” She checks.

“Yes.” He clarified. “To watch you two love each other is my biggest privilege, Iris.” He confirms lovingly.

Her chest seized up. “You love me?” She drags in a deep breath and asks him. Her voice no more than a whisper now.

“You already know the answer.” He counters gently. Wiping a sticky stray hair off her cheek. Fingertips ghosting back over her cheekbone.

She shuts her eyes with how blissful it feels. She must look a state. Red raw eyes leaking tears. Blotchy cheeks and a red flushed neck.

She’s never looked prettier to him. He’s never wanted her more.

His touch turns to his cupping her wet cheek. Lifting her face up to look at him. Drawing them closer together. Tenderly they’re in each other’s arms. A hairs breadth away from the fronts of their bodies touching.

“You undo me, little spark.” He tells her so simply. A smile on his lips as his eyes watch her mouth. “You always have.”

Iris huffs breath. Unable to believe all this. All he means and now he might be walking away. She feels his other hand slip to her waist. A touch gentle and fleeting like air.

She watches him with love in her watery eyes until the space between them is closed.

He leans in and kisses her.

Suddenly getting deeper and deeper after the first touch. Bending at his waist to reach her. His hand holds gently to her back. Scooping her up. Clasping her to his chest when her legs give way. She swoons and her catches her. Holding her up into his strong chest.

How many years worth of love and waiting are written into his lips. So much desire is written into hers. Iris clutches onto him so tight. More tears burst out her eyes because this kiss is sensational. Just like the first one she shared with Kylo. It does things to her that can never be undone.

Her spine is rocketing with blissful shivers. Her fingers knot themselves into the shoulder of his velvet coat. Tendrils of his hair sway forwards and brush against her neck. Engulfing her in the jasmine perfume scent that lingers there. His hand cradles the side of her neck like she’s precious to him. And now she knows how much.

He swallows her up in love and she gets irrevocably sucked in more and more. His hand slips higher up the curve of her back as she sighs into his mouth. He tastes every inch of her. And he finally reveals every part of himself to her. He drowns her in it all. So much she feels lightheaded. Dizzy. Spinning with love.

She sees so much now; white buds snapping open on the trees in spring. Rain falling its nourishing kiss on a roiling ocean. Sunshine on her warm naked heavy limbs. Grit of sand and the rush of waves. Seafoam tickling between her toes.

He tastes like rain, sweet wine and _life_.

His kiss is so tender it makes her feel weightless here in is arms. She can feel her influence sinking into every unused vein of him. Bleeding like crawling ink staining across his glass bones and his paper skin. Shooting to the vacant pit where his heart should lie. Their joining twined pleasure around every inch of skin and every bone in their bodies.

How right it is.

Love is ravaging and inundating every part of her. He takes her over like there’s nothing else she can possibly give. He takes everything she gives and he returns it to her tenfold. Shows her all of his lonely life and how he’s longed for this moment to kiss her. It’s been writ into fate, the stars, and now they collide in love.

She thought she could only love Kylo and he came along and proved her so very wrong. With every look he’s tried to tell her she was meant for the both of them. Made to love two men; not just one. But he shielded her from the knowledge until a time when she could understand it. When she could process it.

He wraps both arms around her back now. Warm hands spanning her waist. She sighs when his hair drifts across her neck again. Spilling onto her body. She follows when he pulls way. Her lips lulled to the taste of him. When they break his breath is warm and scorching against her wet lips.

She feels dazed- and then reality slashes cold at her body. Shredding her muscles. He holds her close still but he can feel her palm start to curl into resistance against his shoulder.

She looks up at him and he can read the pain flushing into her eyes. Scrawled onto her frown.

Her mouth gapes. Sucked raw and red from his own lips. More tears brim in those grey eyes that he hates seeing so saddened. Realisation dawns.

_Kylo. Oh god._

She slips back out his arms and her face scrunched up. “I’m so sorry-“ She gasps. Kylo’s face plays in her mind. She can see his disgust written on his features for her. Dagger slams though her heart. She’d just cheated on and disgraced her loving husband.

She bursts into sobs again. Her back bashing at the door as she turns and flees. She shakes her head with a hand over her mouth. Cries muffled into her palm. She rushes out.

Draegan wants to call after her. He wants to take her back in his arms and explain. Instead he can only watch as she runs from him as if she’s found out what a demon he truly is.

“Iris.” He calls out.

He watches as she alights the stairs in tears. Running from him in despair. And that might very well turn out to be his last glimpse of her.

~


	34. We Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to put my piece on here- and this is in no way detrimental or intended as whining. A while ago a few bad comments on this story, I don’t mind telling you, left a bad taste in my mouth; it started me on a spiral of doubt. I began to justify the naysayers-
> 
> Listen here, I am only human. And I stewed on those comments for days. I’m a level headed person I know my writing isn’t for everyone- I understand it is completely down to individual taste. I’m not out here asking everyone to love me and what I wrote. 
> 
> It took me quite a few day’s and a bit of a step back and some time away to lead me to one conclusion; for those who don’t like the direction of this story; who don’t like that I’m making it about three people coming to fall slowly in love; 
> 
> It’s been there since the beginning. 
> 
> This romance story was always going to be a triad. I writ that into subtle hints from the first few chapters-
> 
> \- if you cannot see the various subtle and much hard worked nuances me and my co author have painstakingly spent hours - months of plotting - weaving them into these chapters- then maybe you are right; this story isn’t for you
> 
> This story has always been about this triad

Iris practically flew into her bedchamber. Tears searing her cheeks, she sprinted for the door and pressed it shut behind her. Sobbing. Shoving her forehead into the wood as she closed the door. Shame spiralling it’s ragged reel through her chest. She sags into the press of the door.

Confusion and shame churn inside her. A rush of it all dragging her low. She’s swimming in a murky black lane and this is the leaden weight dragging her beneath the lapping waves.

Her hands join where her forehead is. Against the door as wracking sobs violently shake her body.

Guilt sat so heavy on her tongue. The bitterness of it slipping down her neck. Dry and foul. Like she’s swallowed chalk.

She was a jumbled mess of half realised love and broken tears. The real actuality of what she’d done quaked her chest like a ravaging rainstorm. Thundered in her lungs and lightning shattered her heart to shards.

How could she ever tell Kylo about this? Where could she even begin? How could she begin? That worry made her sobs wrack harder.

All she’d learned she could barely wrap her head around the sheer manner of it. The immensity of the revelation she’d uncovered. Hidden so long from her sight. And now it’s freed and she doesn’t know what to make of it. Tears sting horribly hot at the corner of her eyes.

She trudged across the beautifully fine bedroom. Across the creamy carpets that squish under her feet. Past the beautiful blue bed with the velvet covers and the scalloped cotton pillows. And always, Mrs Jones is sure to put great vases of freshly plucked flowers on each walnut bedside table. The air is full with the floral waft of it.

She looks down at her stinging palm. Almost bleeding - just like her sore heart. She uncurls her hand and sees the golden broach shimmering there. It’s edges bitten red into her palm where she’d been gripping it.

She’s surprised she’s still capable of holding onto the jewelled thing. Because sheer passionate eroticism of her kiss with Draegan had been enough to shake her to the core; it’s a wonder the item didn’t slip from her grip.

That terrible agony makes more tears squeeze out the corner of her eyes. Drags her lungs dry. She lets the tears come. She almost welcomes them. Prays they wash away some of her sins. Her guilt. Her horrid behaviour.

She lets her mind pin the terrible shame of her being an adulteress over her head. It was only a kiss of course; but it felt so much more intimate than that.

It wasn’t _just_ a kiss. It was something like an awakening.

Draegans soul poured onto his lips. It had spilled into her and she saw the sudden beauty of it all; every dream and vision she’d had of this tall angel with the blue eyes and the silver hair; it hadn’t been a fanciful flight of her imagination. It had been the truth of his influence slipping through the cracks of her subconscious. Trickling through like a babbling brook. Now nothing impedes his influence.

He’d taught her to dance. He guided away her tears when she was sad and kept her from being hurt. He did all that, and then sent Kylo to come along and find her. Said it was his utter privilege to see them together and so in love. And he remained lonely, slinking back into the shadows. It breaks her heart into a thousand sharp bits. Broken glass. She can feel it trembling in her now. Every squeeze of it hurts like hell.

She thinks upon every glimpse of him she’s snatched in her life. The influence of his nearness. She’s never really been without it. She’s been sighting him out the corner of her eyes for years upon years.

The regal turn of his head. The cut of his broad shoulders where it tapers to his trim back. A strand of his silky silver hair slipping over his shoulder as he turned away. Eyes blue as two chunks of cobalt sky fallen to earth. Such a handsomely carved face. As if the artists chisel had just left the marble opus of him. As if the clever artists hand is still brushing away the dust chipped there from it’s formation.

And she can’t deny it any longer; the truth comes bursting out. Forces her to face it. she loves him. Most ardently.

She loves the both of them. She loves the dark hulking vampire that is her husband and she’s impossibly infatuated with the pallid demon who made him.

She thunks her body down on the French striped ivory and gold chaise at the end of the bed. It creaks as it takes her weight and she lets the sadness leak out of her. Leeching in the blue room. Perfectly reflecting her dour mood.

_Iris. What have you done?_

She miserably chides herself. Curling her knees up to her chest and staring at the dead cold fireplace ahead. She rests his forehead on her knees and lets the sadness swallow her whole. Lip wobbling as more tears stung her face. When will this wretchedness stop. How could anything ever resemble normal again?

~

Kylo was out of doors still. The cold morning was clear of frost now. The heavy snow had melted away. But the wind was still bitter when not infused with the warm gold of the sunshine. In the shade it was cool. Lingering in the promise that spring was coming soon. That great hint of sunshine making the mornings warmer and lighter. Apricot warm orange and gold brighter than a spanish doubloon.

He was just bringing Erland back up the cobbled rocky grey path to the stables.

The big idiot actually let Kylo lead him by the reins back today. Usually he stubbornly refused to budge. Stood his ground to nibble precisely two blades of dew speckles grass and tried to wander back in the opposite direction Kylo tried to pull him. It was akin to a vicious tug of war. Kylo pulled one way. Erland seemed constantly determined to pull the opposite direction.

He likes that he’s being amenable today. “Maybe impending fatherhood is mellowing out your spoilt ways.” Kylo says as he pats his stallions strong neck. Erland snorts as if disagreeing. Swishing his tail. If he could’ve frowned he’s sure he would’ve.

Kylo walks his fool horse under the stone archway and through the courtyard gates. Delivering him back to the stable hand for a watering and a brush. And then out to the pasture. Percheron’s didn’t do well being shut up in their stalls all day. Erland subscribed especially to this. He started getting up to mischief if he was left in his stall too long.

He started figuring out how to unlatch his door from a very young age. Caused havoc breaking into the grain store and eating a whole barrel of grain and chaff. If anyone locked Erland up, he’d be sure to give them plenty of attitude because of it. Nicked the brush out their hands when they came to groom him. As they worked on chipping the muck out his hooves, he’d steal their hats or chew on their clothes. Or nudge them to fall over.

Infuriating wasn’t the right word for Erland. Impossible covered it far better-

Kylo walks the fool back across to Jonas. He had the most experience dealing with this devilish horse after all. He thanks his stable hand and turns and walks back up to the castle under the slanted shade coming from the trees.

He’d been out mere seconds after dawn rose. The sunshine was only just crawling honey shade up the white walls of Ranlor. He tips his head up and admired the way the late morning sun stroked everything in its path. Burnt amber at the tips of the trees in the forest. As if autumn had already come.

He climbs the worn old steps back up into the castles edifying walls. Thick grey and sheltering. Proud this place stands. It had always struck him so. Even from his first glance.

All the way back when he first purchased this and the land surrounding. He was still off making his fortune in Europe before he settled here some years later. The castle stood waiting for him. The locals roused and curious as to its dark new owner. If he’d be as savage as the last Lord that took up residence.

He proved himself to be a responsible land owner and an even greater Lord. He had an easy temper and his taxes on the land were reasonable. He was an affable man and made a great point of looking after those who depended on him. He settled into the role of a respectable man. When years earlier he’d been a feral new vampire more concerned with his own appetites than anything else. Time improved him splendidly.

Now it almost seemed impossible and implausible that anyone else could take up the duty of owning and running Ranlor. He stepped up to the task and performed it well. And now with his wife in tow? People adored them all the more for it he’s sure. She brought a new lease of life to Ranlor. In modern parlance he believes its called a woman’s touch. She makes him less of a shadowy figure and more of an approachable affable person. He’s not the eternal bachelor anymore. And how glad he is for it.

He slips into the castle up the steps from the Dutch gardens. Walks into a sun drenched corridor. The one along the east wing. The great marble high ceiling hallway full of windows and studded with antiques and statues. His boots rap sharp along the pointed tiles. His coat flies out behind him as if he had dark wings to make use of.

All seems a normal morning at Ranlor. He can hear the usual cacophony of sounds.

The housemaids bustle around with their Cleaning trugs, the smell of the waxy polish they use, soaking into the wool of their dresses, and he can hear the shrill laughs of their gossiping with each other in Bavarian. A couple of footmen are playing with some of the rowdy dogs up in the grand hall. Sounds of their joviality and the hounds barking bounces off the thick walls up there. He can smell that McTavish is making a pearl barley broth soup, and a roast of some sort. His money is on roast chicken. The way she does it with carrots and onions and a squeeze of lemon juice over the buttery crispy skin.

He likes the influx of life and warmth that washed through this place. It certainly wasn’t like this when just he lived here. It’s something more now. It feels less stale and lonely to him. Hearing the staff laugh didn’t hurt him anymore. For he has his own reasons for joviality too.

He smirks a little smile to himself. Briskly walking up the first set of stairs. Along a hallway that leads to the stairs which goes to the wing of his bedroom. The air is sun and dust mites that twirl on shafts of honey gold and he thinks how handsome this morning is shaping up to be.

He turns the corner for the hallway, and suddenly a bitter gust of sadness coats his tongue. Floods down his throat in a sudden rush. His expression falls. He walks along hearing the distinct sounds of faded sobs clinging to the air.

He passes by a squat window alcove and a tangle of small boyish limbs are sat huddled on the edge. His legs dangling down as he smudges wet tears of his little cheeks. Ravi sits there in his white tunic shirt and his rusty red dhoti trousers. His boots muddy from his running around in the garden. Kylo’s chest almost cleaves in two when Ravi raises his wet walnut doe eyes and peers up at him. Choking on a sob. Hiccuping with his grief.

Kylo’s face draws into pain for seeing his little ward so upset. “Whatever’s the matter?” He asks. Stepping close and clasping his big hand behind Ravi’s shoulder. The bone of his small twiggy arm looked so comically small under Kylo’s dwarfing frame. Like a tiny spindly baby sparrow sitting merrily next to a massive bald eagle. So unafraid of the deadly nature of it.

Ravi sulks down into his lap. Head hanging down. A pile of books abandoned on the sill next to his legs. He wipes more tears as they come off with the back of his hand. Kylo moved in front of his boy and kneeled before him.

“You know you can tell me whatever’s wrong Ravi. Day or night.” Kylo’s insisting. Trying to get him to meet his eyes. In this age, men were supposed to pass on the stupid notion to young boys that they need never talk about what upsets them. Kylo disagrees.

He’s seen men shredded and gouged form battle. Not a scratch on their bodies. But the sudden thrum of horse hooves or loud explosions of clattering sharp gunfire and they reel into tears and tremble with seizures. Sobbing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Minds so blown to bits it melts and pulls apart like fleshy wet scraps of paper. They just lie there sobbing for their mothers.

He’s seen firsthand what men not talking about their ills can lead too. Ugly things happen when a man’s mind is poisoned from war. Anger and paranoia swallows them up. He’d seen what men do to themselves. And worse still, what they inflict on others. War wasn’t instantly ravaging. It’s very real raw effects could and did sneak anywhere undetected.

Ravi’s voice finally comes out in the tiniest saddened whisper. “Draegan’s leaving isn’t he?” He asks. Finally looking up.

His wet butterscotch eyes find Kylo. He fidgets and picks with his hands and doesn’t hold Kylo’s eye-line for long.

Kylo’s mouth churns up a hundred different words to start on. None of them make it past his teeth.

His mouth gapes and a sigh slips out. “Yes, my love, I’m afraid he is.”

“ _Why?”_ He asks in a desperate plea. A cry. A cry so passionate his voice breaks on the word. More tears stream down his face. It makes Kylo feel a sharp arrow shard of pain deep in his chest.

Kylo runs his big hand over Ravi’s shoulder. The force of it moves his whole tiny torso. “Because-“ He starts.

 _Because- Oh,_ how that word housed a million or more things Kylo would and could never explain to Ravi’s young ears.

“I suppose because he wants to go home. It’s time for him to go back to where he belongs.” He tries to describe as sensibly as he can.

Ravi doesn’t look much cheered up by this revelation.

“Why can’t he belong here?” Ravi seeks. Pitting his very seven year old logic against the issue. Against the world even.

Ravi always puts his vast well of intelligence and his child like views against a world he’s growing to come to understand more and more each day. He’s so young. He still has the exuberance to be curious and challenging. Questioning so many things that don’t yet add up to his small and wholesome logic. Kylo loves to see he remains hopeful. Pleading for someone he loves.

“Why can’t he belong here? With us? With Iris, you, and me.” He asks.

He strokes Ravi’s knee. His hand covers both kneecaps so ably.

He used to do this when Ravi woke from nightmares as a tiny tot. He’d wander to find his father most times. But sometimes, Kylo’s company was on the cards. Because he was and always still is Ravi’s safety.

He’d whisk Ravi high up in his arms and talk to him about his nightmares. Told him the creeping fingers of nasty shadows wouldn’t dare touch him. Or they’d have to deal with Kylo first. And he was a ruthless opponent. He batted and chased Ravi’s twisted dark nightmares away and snarled a savage promise that he’ll always keep him safe. He’ll keep everyone safe. Over his literal dead body-

Sometimes Kylo would tuck him in his arms. Hold him until tears ebbed away. Singing him the norse lullaby his mother had once crooned to him. His croaking bassy baritone made a hash of the song, he’s sure. But it always made Ravi feel better. That’s what counted.

Ravi liked being in Kylo’s cold as stone arms after the sweaty severity of a hot thrashing nightmare. It was safety. The feeling and glimpses of things that he’d had since he was a babe in arm. Kylo smelled like a flickering fire at night, the embers and the ash - smoky and wild - soaked their scented way into his hair. As did the pine woods that shuddered with cold stony mountain air. Ravi had that peace and comfort from just being near his biggest protector and oldest friend.

“Because-“ Kylo starts again.

Pretty soon he’s certain he’ll run dry of ‘ _becauses_ ’

“You know, we all like him being here. It’s just. Some people miss where they belong. And-“

He’s run out of explanations or excuses. He had to resort to facts now. Pure and clean. No messy exonerations.

“Ravi he likes us all very much. And I know you are upset that he’s leaving, and that your lessons will stop. But- me and Iris are still here? We can teach you things. We can play with you in the gardens.”

“It’s not the same.” Ravi sniffles sweetly. Tears shining down his cheeks. Kylo’s expression sinks. The fact he can’t soothe this sadness of his.

“Draegan will be very touched that you care for him so.” Kylo comments softly.

“He makes me feel as if I’m clever.” Ravi suggests.

“Ravi-“ Kylo croons.

He has just unknowingly splintered a little flake out of his granite stone heart confessing to that. That sometimes he feels like an annoyance. A flea to be swatted. A child around a whole castle full of adults. It was bound to be lonesome after a while. He saw Draegan as not only a teacher. But a friend. One who listened and respected him. One who had all the time to devote to him. Iris and Kylo often had their hours in the day spoken for.

“Come here-“ Kylo opens his arms and Ravi shoves his body off the windowsill and stands between his legs. Kylo’s arms and chest swallows him up in a hug. He flatters himself that if he ever had a son- he’d be incredibly similar to this sweetly curious and caring boy before him.

“I’m sorry.” He confesses. Hugging his little ward tight.

“Because you are so loved so deeply by all of us. Especially by Draegan.” Leaning back he playfully swipes Ravi’s nose to see him smile. He does. His grin comes back as he wipes away more tears with the back of his hand.

Kylo holds both hands around his small shoulders again. “Now. I saw McTavish had the cake moulds out earlier. What’s say later we go and steal a slice or two?” He winks. Joviality returning on his young boys face. He nods and his mood seems a little improved.

“I need to go and feed the mice now.” Ravi tells him softly. Slipping out his arms and walking away down the hall. The sound of his shoes scuffing the tiles echoing as he goes. Kylo comes back to his full height and watches him trudge away. Desolated in spirit still that he was losing a friend. Head hung low.

He watches him go. Off to tend to the hatbox of mice named after famous scientists that he kept tucked under his bed. He intends in the opposite direction. Ravi’s sore heart making his own feel rather heavy. It reflects his own tumult;

He didn’t feel right about it either.

When he comes to the top of the stairs, the very tall pale incarnation of all this dispelling sadness is sat at on the great marble landing. Perched right by the doors that fronted the hallway leading into Kylo and Iris’s chambers.

There’s a cluster of cream and gold French baroque chairs gathered under a Chandelier draping gown across the ceiling on the landing. Here too there is a cascading large mantel and fireplace but, today, it remains unlit. Dark. Just like the demon sat there in his dull blue coat and grey boots and breeches. Blue looks sad on him today where it usually looked divine and resplendent.

Kylo knows from the mere way Draegan raises his eyes to look at him that something is wrong.

It sets a cold lump in his throat as he alights the last stair. Dread curls it’s disquieting black flame up his spine.

“What is it?” He seeks carefully. Crossing the floor to Draegan quickly. His dark long coat laps behind him. His expression tugging into that earnest frown. Burnt walnut eyes intent on the hurting demon and whatever it is that ails him.

Draegan remarks to himself how Kylo’s eyes always seem to be changing colour dependent on the light. If light was forgiving and abundant around him; they look like honey or amber whiskey. But in starving light, they can be as black as spades. Sticky black like the ocean waves on a inky night. Some darkness turns those expressive eyes into voids. And here they are gun metal black and so serious in their gaze.

Draegan’s eyes don’t leave his. His tongue doesn’t hesitate on digging out the words he needs Kylo to hear.

“I kissed Iris.” Draegan admits.

Kylo thought hearing those three words would eviscerate him; twist his guts and mangle his dark temper into being protective and angry. He thought that image of them pressed close and touching intimately in his head, would cause rage to froth out his mouth and boil his blood. He thought it would demand hurt and pain as bloody as the old ways of the darkest revenge.

Instead, he’s surprised how much he feels hearing this confessed aloud. Something flickers at the base of his brain and it doesn’t feel like revulsion at all. It’s-

He believes it feels like something akin to curiosity- _attraction?_ He’s beguiled by it. Picturing them together-

“I just wanted her to know.”

Those words hang in the air. Sits there, heavy and cloaking like a heavy drape or a thick coat. Solid and real. So many years worth of pain and longing Draegan has writ into every syllable. Kylo can taste the wretchedness of his words. All they represent.

His voice is so somber again when he speaks. So dreadfully quiet.

“The way she looked at me afterwards with tears in her eyes. It was exactly the same way you looked at me before you left. _Exactly_.” He chided himself.

“Looking at me like you’ve seen everything terrible that I really am.”

Piercing wet eyes turned to the floor. Jaw ticking. Grit with sadness. Calm yet still angered with himself for what he’d done. Draegan is calm in all his tempers. It took a great force to get him flustered and to break the icy facade of his expression.

Kylo listens until his words dry up. Stands there and this tide of sadness starts to leak across his boots too. Leeching into the cold sturdy leather. Dragging him in too.

“I can predict why you did.” Kylo explains in odes to their kiss.

“I just wanted her to know I _love_ her. I didn’t want to upset her. Not like this-” Draegan says. If he could sound desperate, his voice made a good attempt at being so. Clinging onto the last scraps of his sanity.

Kylo steps closer. Knee deep in the crushing curling waters now.

“She doesn’t see things the way we do, Draegan.” Kylo tells him.

Even after all his years of knowledge about her. He didn’t quite glean the fact that her mortal vows were something sacred to her. Draegan is beyond understanding such a thing. Through no fault of his own. He was just made a different way to humans, and vampires even. He was placed cruelly outside it all. He had to learn so much about humanity by his own behest.

The humanity he’d been constantly tethered too, but never tugged into. He clutched onto that hard learned understanding with everything he had. Really, how could a demon ever understand people and things that were made and formed so much purer than his rotten self. The clutch of dark vile things that made him up.

Sometimes he forgets; he forgets he isn’t human. He’s moved along them so long he can almost trick himself into believing that he is a disposable mortal with a ticking working heart and sweetly simple dreams that he can fulfill. Moments like this bring the truth crashing down hard on him like steel cold axe blows.

He is reminded of the terrible reality of all this; that he is the creature who tried to step out of the shadows and into the sun. And now he is scorned and returned to the shivering cold clutch of the dark. That’s where he should be. Not basking in love he thought he deserved.

Draegan hates that he has never been mortal. He detests it. He can never truly know the definitions of one of its most ancient customs. He can try; but he falls short every time.

Kylo holds a better bearing on vows and marital oaths. After all, he too was human once. In his time, long long since, he garnered a rudimentary understanding and knowledge of what a marriage meant to two people. Two mortal halves joined as one and all that unfolded because of it. It was a union. A bond. A faith. And to her, she was raised with the knowledge that the bind between man and wife was an unbreakable thing.

“Iris holds true to very mortal values of love and affection. Fidelity and loyalty. She’s upset because she’ll be thinking about how I will react to the news of her kissing another.” Kylo’s telling him.

“To you, the action was love. For her? It was malice.” Kylo tells.

Dragean understood that now. That knowledge however, it doesn’t help one bit.

“We are not mortal men. And what is happening here between the three of us is anything but normal.” Kylo tells him with a tender hint of fierce love in his voice.

Draegan swallows. Tears and lumps like stone lay in his throat. It’s a mocking imitation of grief. Grief he was never designed to feel- he feels it deeper than a million flaming arrows to his chest. He’s Saint sensation pinned down and bleeding and stuck with arrows. Though it wasn’t enough to kill him. That would be too soft a mercy.

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear you admit to that.” Draegan tells him.

The look they were giving each other told of the same thing. What they both wanted. But he’s breaking apart right on the spot he sits for Iris, and her sadness and the awful reality that he’d caused it mangled him up.

A crushed and malformed demon. How could he ever have hoped he could deserve them both? Idle daydreams of the three of them had so tempted him. Swam through his head like honey. Golden and shimmering.

“I can’t leave things this way- with no goodbye. I need to talk to her.” He comments almost desperately. His voice is hollow with sadness.

“I concur.” Kylo turns his head looks ahead into the hall.

The door to Iris’ duchess suite is firmly closed. A pool of glowing yellow sunshine stripes along the hallway floor and cuts up the white wainscoted walls. Sharp slicing light. Dust mites of nothing dancing a pretty arc in the air.

He knows what must be done. He steps across to where his shattered love sits on the chaise. Held together by all the barest scraps of his fading humanity.

He looks up to him. Kylo never thought he’d see a day when Draegan looked small. Never. The man stood as great and as noble as those sturdy trees in the forest. Seeing him felled and cut to splintered shards hurts Kylo in ways he can’t name.

“Come with me. We can talk to her together. I think it’s high time we lay everything about this out in the open.” He begins with a heavy trace bearing upon his words.

“I think she needs to speak to you first. As her husband. You can say things to her that I cannot.” He remarks. Words laced with his familiar companion of pain.

Draegan rises to a stand. Slowly coming to his proud stature. Coat falling down his body. Blue like a crushed velvet waterfall.

Kylo bolsters him with a firm nod. Clasping his hand lightly. Draegan casts his eyes sorrowful into Kylo’s for a precious moment. The touch helped heal him up a little. Though he cannot escape the fact that he’s caused hurt to the sweetest frail creature put on this earth. Kylo senses that.

He steps off and leads the way. His coat billowing out behind him. Shadow black drapes behind his steps like the proper cloying darkness belonging to any decently monstrous vampire.

He feels something stick in the back of his throat as he comes face to face with the white gilded door of the duchess suite. He could feel the sad cold storm of his wife’s dread lurking beyond the door case inside. Like condensation from a too hot bath leaking dripping crying down the walls. Muggy in the air like steamy heat. Salt, sadness and wretchedness laying in the base of her throat like sad grey fog. Choking. Choking.

He could always sense the shift in her mood. Their connection and bond made it impossible to ignore. This cuts him deep. About as deep as the fatal wound that caused his end on that fateful night so long ago.

Draegan could ably shield his emotions and feelings from Kylo’s reckoning, off he was harder to read than granite. Iris could never mask herself from Kylo’s grasp. She’s so open and honest. Her mortal senses he could read better than a book in Ranlor’s library. The timpani of her lonely heart now, he can hear it thumping off the walls. It sounds so horribly sad. It aches at him like stinging ice rain soaking into his back.

He knocks lightly on the door. Knuckles causing a frail hollow rap through the wood.

He calls her name after a few more seconds of deafening silence. Silence so thick the air almost hummed with it.

“Iris?” He seeks her gently.

Nothing but a sniffle comes from inside the room. His mouth gapes. He dares to breach the ramparts.

He twists the door handle and creeps open the door. He keeps himself out in the hallway. Just peers in. It felt too aggressive to insert himself into her sadness like this. Draegan knows too. He lingers behind Kylo.

He spied her. There in the middle of the richly decorated room. Curled up with her knees to her chest and her dark skirts spilling onto the thick carpet like a spilled draping of dark prussian ink. He can taste the salt of her tears mingled with the fresh roses in the vases by the bedside. That floral sweet tastes rotten to him. They may aswell be decaying papery stems for all he knows.

When she raises her head and sees him there, more tears come. Pain cracks the granite solidity of Kylo’s chest.

Her eyes are red and so raw. She unfolds herself and rises to a stand. Crosses right away to the window. Shooting across the carpet like she’d been burned. Scorched her slippered feet to cinders.

She puts her back to him. Croaking tears. Turning away from him as she wipes her tears and choked back broken breaths.

He steps into the room in slow degrees. That mournful tide of her sadness is thigh deep to him now and he’s no qualms wading in ever deeper. He’ll walk into this until the tide crushed over his head and drowned him.

“Dove-“ He coos gently. Keeping his voice barely beyond a hushed whisper.

“Don’t look at me.” Comes a hopelessly small sob from over by the window.

Outside the door. Draegan shuts his eyes in pain for love of her. He lets the wall support him a moment. Otherwise he couldn’t bare it. Tips his pale head back to rest against the exposed thick brick wall.

Kylo’s in here, stuck on the watery misted reflection of her he can see dulled in the glass as she stands in front of it. Such an echo of her when she is alive and vibrant and beautifully real. The sad ghost of her living in the glass isn’t like her at all. It’s shades away from his Iris. This saddened hiding creature scurrying from the sight of him.

It’s terrible of him to think it; but the day he thought he’d see that, would be her cowering in fear as someone else’s blood drips from his maw. He thought that would be the way this would happen.

“Why can’t I look at my own wife?” He asks so calmly. His quiet voice shattering and slicing at the thick skin of the tragic silence engulfing them all.

“Because I don’t deserve to look upon you.” She cries. Sobbing more. Voice wobbling and broken. The light from the window sparkles greatly in the new tears that flow down her cheeks. The wet forked trail of them scarred white into her face. Sunlight looms in the worn path of her tears.

“You won’t want to be near me after you find out and I’m sorry. I’m _so sorry_ -“ She cries. Hiccuping and shattered. Slumping into her hands and keeping herself faced away from him otherwise she doesn’t know how she can bare it. It’s eating away at her and she lets it’s wretchedness come. Wishes for more of it as a consolation.

She can’t tolerate seeing his beautiful walnut brown eyes looking at her when he finds out. The frown that will come crashing down on his dark brow. The anger and hurt that she’ll have caused him. It almost makes her double over with pain. Harder and sharper than anything she’s known before. It feels like she’s drying with it. Crippling curling mangling her spine with agony.

“My darling, come here.” He urges. Padding across the carpet and trying to take her in his arms.

She doesn’t want to budge when she feels his body at her back. But she turns and looks at him. He doesn’t let her twist away. She tries to pull back but he softly captures her wrists and pulls her into him. There’s no wriggling away from this. He won’t let her. He takes her into his arms and her fight dissolved.

She sobs into his chest. He dips his knees a little and clasps her to his body. Tight and with no room to edge away. He drapes her knees across his and sits on the edge of her big blue bed. Arm around her back and cupping her hip. The other rests heavy and large on both her kneecaps.

She cries all the more. Because she realises she had to tell him. Right here and now she had to break her husbands heart. She shakes her head and feels tears drip onto her bodice. Slipping down onto his shoulder too. She wrenches her fingers into his collar as if she could rip open the cotton strands with her stinging fingernails. Raking and hurting. Her fingertips wisp against his cold neck and that’s enough to make her face crumble. She cries into his dark shoulder.

Him. Her love. The man who’s given her everything he could possess and she’s gone and broken her faith to him. Her loyalty.

He shushes her and holds her close. Can feel her salty tears slipping down into his skin.

“Iris _I know_ -“ Kylo tells her. Both his hands clamped to her as he captures her attention over her sobs. He doesn’t look at her but he kisses her temple. Cold mouth moving at her head. Moving against her hair. His voice is so deep and soft she can feel the tender tone of it sinking into her skin.

“I know what happened between you.” He enlightens.

Iris shakes her head wildly and brings a hand up to clasp over her mouth. Her heart tremors and pumps with agony and more tears flow. Sobs of sadness muffled wetly into her hand. He holds her head so tight. Desperately kisses her. She tries to bury herself in his body. As if she could wrap him around her like warm clay. Lost in the mush and sinking into it. Shielding her.

“How can you look at me? You should hate me.” She cries into his coat. Words suffocated under tears.

Kylo asserts himself close. Thumbs away her tears. Clasps his hand over her head. Holds her so tightly. Keeps her pressed close. He shakes his head. Closed his eyes and just anchors her where she is.

“I could never. Iris, I could _never_.” He promises her. Voice rising to a higher volume. Pain pierced his strong voice too. He needed to make her hear this. The clarity of all this;

“I can never hate you. Not for anything.” He says firmly. He pressed kisses to her temples again and again, again.

“I could never hate you because it would be the height of hypocrisy if I did, considering my own feelings.” He says softly.  
  


His hand slid down to her neck. He slants his forehead to touch to hers. He just had to touch her. She’s his touch stone. His value of something so tangible. He finds himself when he holds her hand. Kisses her. He is reminded of what they have.

She pulls back and looks up at him. Tearfully. The sobs had ceased. She puts her own confused gaze into his warm eyes. Tears move down her cheeks, sliding low and silent. Her hands press to his shoulders.

“You still love him?” She asks outright.

Her face is the picture of sadness and intrigue. She’s trying to wrap her head around it. It’s like trying to untangle a heavy iron chain. Her arms hurt and it’s tiring, she aches like fire, and she’s so desperately trying to pick a strand to follow and afford her some sense.

“I kissed him too. Yesterday.” He explains. A hurt kind of truth crosses his face.

“You do love him.” Iris states in a whisper. As if finally figuring out an equation that had never afforded her clarity. One who’s answer was always confusing and muddied.

Kylo nods and it’s like the most sacred sight in the world to her to see.

“I love him just as you do.” He tells her plainly. Passion in his voice backing up his words.

He reaches over to take the tears away. Let’s them sink into the tips of his fingers. Eaten away into his skin.

“I know why you are upset. You kissed him and thought I’d be incensed by it.” He starts.

She calms herself. Swallows back a sniffling sob that threatened her throat. She nods. More terrible tears slipping down.

“I thought you’d be so furious at me. The history between the two of you, and then I go and do something foolish like that.” She laments. Her voice still small and saddened.

“It wasn’t foolish. And if it is, then I’m a bloody fool too.” He assures her.

His hand around her hip cups closer. Squeezing her in comfort. His hand by her head slipped down her neck. Cradling the side of it.

Perhaps they are fools; fools both caught in the same love.

“Despite all his knowledge, he sees what he did as an act of love. He did it in order to show you what you mean to him. It had nothing to do with breaking bonds or vows. Not even ones as precious as ours.” He informs.

“It wasn’t a malicious act. It was just the only way he could show you of his affections for you.” Kylo tells her.

She draws back fiddling with the open collar of his neck. Her eyes red and burning, stinging hard. She knows he’s looking at her. She can feel the warm press of his eyes. He nudges his nose to her forehead. It crumpled the tip where he pressed it into her to kiss her. Covering her in kisses and love so she knows it’s alright.

“I reacted wrongly-“ She asks.

Kylo shakes his head. So sweet runs her goodness. “ _No_ , my dove. You reacted truthfully. You were entitled to act whatever way you felt.” He soothes.

“This is a lot to take in. A lot to learn about.” He clarifies.

How many years worth of longing and yearning are perching behind these events- Iris knows her meagre time can’t compare with Kylo’s thousand years. Draegan most likely had a whole millennia of time behind him. And if he knew this whole time? She can’t even comprehend not wrap her sensible head around that tragic fact.

A small smile nudges suddenly at his lips. “Besides, I highly doubt you’ve ever kissed a demon before.” He asks with a light tone to his voice.

Iris sniffles. His levity lifts her mood a second. “Just as I had never kissed a vampire before I met you.” She is pleased to tell him - rather obviously.

She inelegantly wipes her face on her kerchief he pulls out his pocket for her. The patch of cotton soaks the wet sadness away.

Kylo feels that tide from earlier receding now down past their calves. Swishing away. Staining now only at the hem of her skirts and at the bottom of his coat.

“Why didn’t he tell me any of this- about-“ She shakes her head. Words fail to come to the summons of her brain. “About any of it.” She asks.

“He had the time with you. He didn’t have that luxury with me.” Kylo lays out for her.

“When he found me I was already dying. I had moments, if not seconds, to comprehend him. And then he changed me. He had to move quickly to save me. But with you? He had the freedom to let you move to him he gradually. Probably so as not to overwhelm you with it.”

Iris can’t deny. It was overwhelming. In the absolutely best sense of the word.

“I saw it, you know.” He confesses. She turns her eyes up to his own. So warm and comforting. Encompassing too. Sunshine splashed on walnut wood.

“I could see your bond for each other starting to form.” He admits. So tangible. So real.

He felt it aswell as saw it. Wrapping around them both and bridged between them like spiders silk. Delicate but strong. Flexing and moving and growing with them. Never snapping.

It was in the way Iris smiled up him. Listening as he spoke to her. The way he extended his hand to her to help her down stairs or to open a door. Hidden in plain sight in the curve of his smile and the curiosity that lay for him in her eyes with every gaze. Every gaze that she worried lingered too long.

“To know that he would love you and protect you as fiercely as he was capable. And just as wildly as I do...” It’s his turn to close his eyes. He rests against her with a great swell of emotion and feeling passing through his dead veins like the hot blood that used to be carried there.

“I started to love him for that too. And when I understood you felt the same-“ He chokes on his words. Because he simply cannot fathom how good it felt. How right it seemed- natural that they would all come to this point. This impasse.

“It moved me, Iris. Because not only do I get to love you both. But I could see you starting to love each other too.” He confesses. Sentiments he never thought he’d ever be able to whisper aloud. And now he can. It’s not about loving one of them more than the other; it’s not a competition, it’s so equal to him.

Iris cups his face tenderly and kisses his brow. It seemed madness that she should lift her hands off him. The validity and sacred aura of the moment demanded it. Demanded touch and words and feelings passing so grave and understanding could finally flourish between them about this whole thing.

“Kylo. What is it that’s happening here with the three of us?” She asks desperately. Begging for clarity.

He smiles and thumbs her cheeks til there’s no more trace of tears at all. No redness. No sadness. All the salt is rubbed away.

“Something that I think was always designed to happen.” He implies deeply.

“My guess is that he’d say it was written into fate. Us all finding each other in this way.” Kylo suggests. Eluding to Draegan.

“Can we have an, unusual marriage, do you think?” Iris asks. The whole crux of these feelings and discoveries sat in her words.

Kylo smiles.

“The weight of all this is so tremendous.” Iris declares. She hardly knows where to begin.

“It is.” Kylo agrees.

“Do you think you could tackle the challenge of loving us both?” Kylo checks still wearing a slight smile. He’s finally saying the things he never imagined he would. It feels like a freedom he never thought he could grasp.

“You know I don’t take love lightly.” She swears. Giving her consent. She vows it so seriously and so swiftly. It makes him ache inside to see it.

“I know you don’t.” He declares.

There’s never any words from her that can aptly nor ultimately summarise her feelings for him, and now for Draegan too. It’s too much. Too great. She loves both these men with the burning fire and passion enough to rival the blazing sun.

She thought she’d have to go on tearing her eyes off Draegan because otherwise she’d get caught in her staring, admiring him. She figured she shouldn’t be in his company otherwise she’d start confessing to herself how much she enjoys it. And not in a way that could be termed as just acquaintance or friendship. Not in ways that could remark on reminding her she already had a husband.

He smiles because she will always be ready remind him of the life altering love they so greatly share. He makes a point to always to do the same.

“I believe I will love you both til the stars turn cold. Those are my honest feelings on the subject.” She tells him. He brushes a sticky lock of hair back off her cheek. She grasps his wrist of the hand that touches her face. Her heart calms its furious thud in her torso. It hurts her less now.

He softly slants his forehead into hers. His cool skin pressed to her clammy brow.

He takes the gentlest taste of her lips. Lifting her face to his with one hand. His cold plump lips flush a strong reminder into her frail body.

Iris whispers her fears against him when she pulls back. “I don’t want him to go.” She admits. She can confess this fear now they’d laid everything open.

“Then tell him.“ He urges. He kisses her temple again. A tiny press that feels so pure and good.

He shifts another lock of dishevelled hair back behind her ear.

“He’s outside the door.” Kylo whispers to her softly. She passes him back the crumpled kerchief.

‘ _Go_ -‘ He urges her on. Pressing a hand to her back as she rises to a stand. She uprights herself and stands at the end of the bed between his knees. Just holding his hand for a few seconds longer.

The way he looks at her surpasses all her guilt and uncertainty.

He nods gently. Letting her know he wants this too. Just as much as she does. Giving her all the permission and bravery she needs to proceed.

She pads across to the door. Skirts sweeping the thick carpets. She swallows as she comes to the door. Sunshine starts to creep across her slippered toes as she steps out into the hall.

“Draegan.” Comes her voice calling for him. Curls of her hair fly up slightly as she twists her head to look at him.

He’s waiting on her. Back pressed to the wall. In a patch of milky-yellow sunshine that simply makes him look so beautiful it truly does take her breath away. A tall slip of blue spring. Jasmine perfume of him perches in the air.

He was gazing out the window. But he turns his head to her when he sees her there. Tears sit shimmering in his eyes. Sadness swims around him. As if he’s a mournful maiden in a brook, sinking with the heaviness of all of it. Dragged down down. All these years - too many to count - he’s been dragged down. Lost beyond the water.

Just like he lost Kylo. And now she was equally as lost to him too. It’s almost too much for anyone to bear.

But he will bear it won’t he? He wasn’t mortal and he wasn’t human. He was made for a darker purpose and maybe he deserves all the sadness and loneliness heaped frequently upon him. He is not human so he doesn’t deserve to feel all the things that humans can feel; he deserves to be set apart and forever wanting. Wishing.

Wishing the rain felt normal falling on his skin. Slipping down like sharp ice knives on mortal flesh. Just hoping to be loved and love in return. To kiss the two people he loves. Drink their warmth and the vitality from their lips in that kiss; feel happiness skip through his normal veins. Make him feel. Tear him open. Make him less like a distant cold statue waiting to be adored. Always watching on and never changing.

“I’m sorry.” He says to her as she steps out into the hallway. Slightly closer toward him. He’s so serene. But she can see all the ways his sadness breaks him down. He looks composed even as he’s falling to pieces.

“I’m sorry for hurting you by doing what I did. I thought it would show you. And yet all it did was cause harm. That’s one thing I didn’t want to happen.” He explains sombrely.

Iris’ expression is one of pain for him. Brows creased. She fiddles uncertainly with her hands.

“May I enquire-“ She begins. A sudden swell of emotion in her chest almost blinds and chokes her. Strangles her from the inside out. She looked to the floorboards beneath her feet, but she eventually plucks the courage from somewhere to look at him.

They’re facing each other - for the first time with no boundaries set in their way, and no half truths concealed and tucked away. Everything is here. It’s here and urgent and it demands the utmost attention and care.

“As to whether you still intend on leaving Ranlor?” She asks through a raspy voice that betrays her heavy heartfelt feelings in the matter.

He gazed at her a moment. A slight tilt of his head. Drinking in the woman he’s been aching to know intimately for years. Standing as she was all worry and curiosity. In her cotton blue dress that she always wears so prettily. Ancient tears dry under her raw eyes. She fidgets with her hands like a green debutante conversing with a man for the first time.

He was cursed to watch his little spark from afar. Being this close of late had spoiled him. He began to look forwards to seeing her each day here. Across the table at breakfast. Or out in the sunny woods with the wind tangling in her hair. That wild tumble of her tawny hair he so loves. Those howlite innocent eyes. Such an innocent curious creature- she made him feel less like the devil he was made to be.

She made him feel his humanity and that yearning makes his knees tremble right then and there. Hurts him so powerfully he can barely stand.

“I believe I should.” Comes his answer.

Iris bites the inside of her lip. He watches her teeth chew against her lower lip. Catching it.

“And if I asked for you to stay?” She dares.

 _Christ_ \- that almost undoes him. Unpicks the bones from his knees and leaves him a hopeless wreck. As if a puppet had just had it strings severed. Sliced cleanly free.

“I think my unannounced visit had caused enough consternation here, spark.” He admits.

He hated admitting to it. But that’s what happened. He came because he wanted a glimpse- it was selfish of him to do so. But he did it in his own interested and risked the consequences of his actions. He feels now how foolish and callous that was.

“I only wish you both joy. I’m sorry to have intruded on it.” He offers to her. Steps closer and bears down on her with a look that she wants to weep at seeing. So broken.

Now Iris feels her heart crack. Splintering to shards like broken ice. Her chest is seizing up. Tears threaten again. She’s had enough of tears-

She looks down. His hand hangs limp by his side. She reaches for it.

“ _Don’t_ go.” She begs him. Such a simple command. Two tiny words that meant the world to him.

Her hand seeks for his. He so keenly feels her delicate palms clutch at his one hand. Their size difference was vast and he can feel the life and the emotions running in her hot veins like water. It flows into him and he’s caught out by it. She loves how comforting and warm his hands always are. His skin is soothing to the touch.

He looks down and he intently watches their hands. His eyes soft as chalky clouds and summer skies. Iris steps to him and holds his one hand in both of hers. He looks down at her with a mild frown of intent worry set in his brow.

“I don’t want you to go.” She tells him. Nervously confessing. Stroking over his big soft knuckles.

She met his eyes for a moment but then she looks down to their hands. Her fingers tracing along the ridges and creases of skin at his knuckles. He’s such soft skin she finds it had to believe he was ever a ruthless warrior scarred by swords and bloody wars. A dark voice bassy and low shatters the silence from the doorway behind them. Where he lurks. A shadow at the white doorcase.

“She’s not the only one who wants you to stay.” Kylo tells them from his vantage point. Having silently padded closer to where they are stood.

Draegan draws his eyes from Iris and up to Kylo. Who speaks again.

“I want it too.” He adds.

Iris swallows. She’s trying to find some normalcy in her words to approach this.

Truth was, she should’ve thrown all normalcy out the window the day she married a thousand year old vampire. Maybe their unusual stance can yet work out in their favour. Though she’s scrambling to wrap her mind around it all.

Dragean lifts his eyes and looks over Iris’s shoulder. Catching on Kylo’s dark whiskey warm gaze.

“Both of you have agreed to this?.” He seeks. Because he will not have one. He would have both or banish himself away with nothing at all. There’s no other solution.

Kylo looks at Draegan in a way he hasn’t for a thousand years. With love and understanding on his expression. Acceptance. He finally turned around and faces the rabid hound that’s been on his heels all these years. Draegan and his affections. It’s all here, plain as day.

And Draegan loved Iris too. Just as fiercely. He can see it. He can almost touch it, the essence of it is so palpable. Strong as satin ribbon. The bonds that tethered them all together.

“Our minds are made up, Draegan.” Iris steels strongly.

She tries to fall back on some of the hard hammered lessons she had pounded into her head as a girl. Etiquette and ladylike behaviours. All she could really grasp onto was nonsense; her life as a budding young debutante to society had seldom required training her for the day a vampire and a demon propositioned her with declarations of passionate love.

“Will you reconsider now?” Iris asks him. Desperate to hear he’ll change his mind. He smiles down at her candour.

He looks like he can’t be hearing them correctly. Eyes flickering from man to wife, and back again. He wouldn’t make one move until he knows the sentiment comes from the both of them. Iris anoints Draegan with some hard facts.

“I cannot grasp how this makes sense. The three of us. But maybe everything doesn’t always need to fit into the narrow parameters of something as neat as sense.” Iris begins.

“All I know is this; It just feels - _correct_.” She explains. Kylo can hear the trembles of excitement and love heavy on her voice.

“It didn’t always to me, but it does now. Everything you’ve showed me.” She says to Draegan who smiles lightly at her.

“I love you both.” She explains with a crackling voice.

“It would be so very cruel of you to leave us now. Draegan Verros. Just when I can start to love you back.” She sniffles.

This time she can see how his smile does reach his eyes. He gently folds his fingers through hers. She was so delicate in comparison to him. His eyes stroke and drift along the blue veins in her pale hands. Wrapped around his so tight it’s like she never wanted to let him go.

She doesn’t. That much is clear. Nor does Kylo.

Draegan leans forwards, withdrawing his hands and cups gently one side of her kind head. He pressed a sweet kiss of thanks to her forehead. Rests his nose and lips against her brow for a second.

“I had better stay then had I not?” He smiles. Eyes slipping closed as he gets dizzy on the nearness and the love of her. If this is his love at last. His salvation? She smells like lavender and soap and she’s making his vacant heart beat faster than the wings of a hummingbird.

“I’ll give you both some time to mull over this. It’s a lot to undertake I realise that. I have no expectations beyond this.” He tells. Iris looks slightly worried when he pulls away to step back. This is everything and more to him-

He chuckles soothingly. Catches her hand and rubs his thumb and a cold grey stone ring catches rasps across her skin.

“Only for a walk in the woods, little spark, don’t fret.” His smirk curls up slightly wider.

“I wouldn’t dare go anywhere else now.” He promises. Cupping over one side of her neck. Feeling her rough tumble of hair brush against his palm.

She smiles. Looks over at her husband who smiles and nods genially at the demon as he stays haunting the doorway of her rooms.

The sensations of love and affection burn bright in his chest. And he cherished it so much. It felt impossible. Iris was correct- this felt _right_.

Draegan smiles again and his breath splinters in his throat. He almost can’t believe it’s come to this. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine this would come to pass.

He slips past Iris and his fingers slip away from her. They both watch the tall man make his way down the corridor. Spring shrouded in velvet blue. Gliding away like a sweet summer storm. Sunshine glittering in his hair.

They watch until he’s out of sight. Air humming with the words spoken.

Kylo steps up to his wife and takes both her hands. She remarks to herself how it was oddly reminiscent of how they stood when they took their wedding vows. Facing each other. Hands clasped. He brings her joined hands up and kisses them.

Iris wants to say so many things, she opens her mouth and no sound comes out. She flounders. She’s happy but she’s at a loss of what to feel to say to him.

Kylo smiles down all warm and melting eyes at her. His cold hand comes up to cup one side of her flushed red neck. Skin at the base of her neck swirling with heat. Splotchy from her crying.

“I know.” Kylo nods in utter understanding. He can remember the feeling of first falling in love with Draegan.

He can remember so vividly how all consuming it was to fall for a demon such as him. It was like someone had wrapped up the world in silk wrappings and ribbon and handed it to him as a gift. Anything was possible. Everything was clear. He was in soul searing love with Draegan and it was the making of him- almost literally.

She still looks like she’s struggling to find a coherent thought. “Are we-“ She asks. Seeking as to the condition of their marriage.

“I meant what I said.” He tells her honestly. Trying to dispel her uncertainty. Letting her know his honesty was as brutal as hers.

“I- I believe I love him.” She says. As if testing it out loud for the first time. She says it like stepping onto eggshells. It’s unsure and she can’t be certain of the outcome.

And he smirks wider at her-

“I felt that too.” He describes. Not only did he feel the keenness of their budding connection, each day as it grew and grew more sure. But he spoke of his own bond to the demon aswell. It was delightfully rekindled after years of being dead and dulled.

“We can take this as slow and as glacial as you feel comfortable with. I know Draegan would align with me on this. We can settle on love for now. The rest can come in time if you wish it. It doesn’t have to be anything more than what we have now if that pleases you.” He tells her kindly.

She nods. It still all seems so strange. But in the most marvellous sense.

“I get to love you both. For now that’s, _my god,_ it’s everything to me, Kylo. That I could deserve love from you, and from him.” She says. Voice almost breaking again with the weight of it. She feels unworthy.

She grabs into his lapels and buried herself into a hug in his chest. He wraps his big arms around her like a loving reflex. Nests his chin in her hair. She always felt so warm and snug in his hold. Her embrace soothes him.

She feels the worn cotton of hair shirt soft at her temple. Bramble and pine cologne whirls and drifts its scent at the base of his cold neck. Caught in his great black coat that laps at his legs like huge black moth wings. She can tell he was out of doors riding. She can smell the sharp air and sunshine forest scent thats permeating gently off his clothes.

“I’m glad you both found your peace together at last too.” She whispers into his shirt collar. As if it was her well guarded secret. Her whispered words slither and rustle into the cloth of his cravat where she spoke them.

For now, all they’d discussed and shared was enough to remark upon- it’s _everything_. And they all feel how keenly they are perched on the precipice of it growing into so much more... when she wants it. When she’s ready-

He holds the back of her shoulders and gently cups her head. He speaks and she feels the loving hum of it kiss into her forehead.

 _“Me too_ , Dove” Kylo’s smiling. “Me too.”

~


	35. The Feeding Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN for the shit show that is 2020 🎃🕷🕸🍁🍂🦇 pls accept this offering of spooky animalistic porn- me and snacks worked real hard on this! We hope you love it as much as we did swooning over it

  
  


Nights when the moon was its full bowl of pearl instilled an odd sort of energy around Ranlor.

Iris could feel it. It prickles upon the air like stabbing icicles. That feeling that resides deep in the flesh of her belly - nestled far inside the meat of her. Quivering from within. Tensions knotted up her body and the air, so tangled with it, even more so did this mood take its toll on her husband.

It was like he was brimming at full capacity all day. Muscles so full and his skin felt too tight. She had a trained eye by now; she can see the strains on his persons. The grit teeth when he wants to gnash and snap his teeth and be impatient with Jomar. The marble set of his grit jaw. His eyes start to fleck with gold, little glimmers of light inbetween the swallow of their usual walnut brown dark. Like sun casting and catching in rain droplets across a wet window pane.

His veins singe with the newfound dark energies that run rampant in his blood. Hellfire starting to flush its dark unholy influence into his blood. He swirls with need. It cloys at the base of his throat like cologne. Iris can feel how he looks at her throughout the day; glimmers of heat prickle on her skin as the beast is given more and more reign over her husband. The gentleman in him is slowly and surely faded out.

It’s how he looks at her neck when she speaks. Watches the blue veins flush and glug with delicious life. His breath quickens when she hands him a cup and saucer of coffee at breakfast and their hands brush. Electricity snaps into him and _by god_ -

He wanted to swipe the table clean, crash every dratted porcelain spode plate to dash to splinters on the floor, and rip her bodice down, biting the dress with his teeth like a damned dog, as he spears his cock into her blazing slick cunt. Even if she wasn’t wet enough to take him. She would. He wants to drink in her yelps as he shunts his hips to hers in a vicious thrust and feels her muscles forced to take him in. He wants to fuck her open and listen to her wail his name. Feel the holy fire sting of her nails raking into his skin. Stabbing his shoulders. His scalp. His arms. Anywhere, everywhere-

No things any Regency gentleman should be thinking, smiling like lucifer into his cup of coffee over the breakfast table at his darling sweet wife. When she sucks a spilled smudge of cherry jam off her thumb, he only just possesses the ability to swallow down his growl. His throat hurts and burns with it. His gums suddenly feel like two joined bands of molten hot metal in his mouth.

Lust. Hunger. Dark powerful things a girl was taught to flee from. Iris hugs closer into that dark. For it fascinates her.

He went out for his morning ride to feel the pound of the earth under Erland’s hooves. He rode hard and heavy for hours. Today he kisses Iris like he wants to swallow her up. It’s urgent and angry. He picks her up and twirls her around. Slants her across his lap. Kisses her like a passionate madman - because today and tonight he will be mad with such clawing animosity crawling at his every nerve - he growls and grunts into their kisses like some prepossessing caveman. He ate almost an entire haunch of venison at luncheon. Brute thick arms slicing up the dripping meat with ferocity. All his appetites stoked by it.

And now night has fallen, its bruising colours darken the sky fully. Nights in it’s swift blow, falls heavy. No stars shine tonight. The moon is lost in a chunky swirl of chowder thick cloud. White glows the clouds where it lays. Hiding the moonlight from washing watery white over the forest. Iris is sitting in the window alcove of their bedchamber.

The exposed golden stone is cold and uneven against her back. She stole a crimson silk pillow from the bed and stuffed it behind her back. A midnight blue shawl she draped around her shoulders as a shawl. It’s a light wool. Stitched with embroidered silver flowers. Kylo spoiled her with some shawls from a local dressmakers, who’s fabrics and stitching was exquisite. A wedding present he had said. Keep her warm where he couldn’t.

After all, she’s only in her tissue thin cotton nightgown. She needed extra layers of warmth for the cold that scrapes hard as freezing metal sword tips at the window.

She’s warm and sluggish - like freshly hot kneaded dough, pummelled into relative ease- from her lavender oil bath. She feels now so sedate. So much so she lets the novel she was enjoying rest on her sloped knees. Pulled up in front of her. Cold leather of it pressed her legs. She notices now her warmed toes starting to stab painful cold in the prickling cold shes sat near. The cotton glides gently and worn against her skin. It’s comfortable. And she watched the dreadfully dark night unfold out the window. Knowing who will soon join it.

She’s contented to sit here and admire the fine forest prospect out the window. A sea of blue and black trees shift and stomp on the easy wind. Ruffled the pine needles and branches to clash together. All of nature appears restless under a full moon.

Coldness whirls around her, drafty like an unwelcome visitor. The fire banished that sneaky intruder away. It roars orange like the heart of a blazing tribal Indian sun in the half. Paprika orange and vermillion flames eats away the cold air and makes shadows dance slithering black tongues up the exposed stone walls. Churns the warm crimson room to scarlet, gold and fire.

But it’s nowhere near as warming to her as the man opposite.

She gazes lovingly across the crimson plane of their velvet bed to where her husband stands and undresses opposite. He’s unknotting his cravat and idly glancing off into the room. Stood sideways on. Giving her an exquisite glimpse of him in profile. That handsome brow as his hair curls forwards over it. The set of his eyes - soon they would be as gold as she’s heard the sands of Egypt are.

She wraps the shawl tighter around herself. Remarks with a slight smile at the absurdity of that; when he’s lost to the visceral consuming nature of that beast that rules him, in the mud and muck hunting for blood. And his eyes are so full of sunflower gold. Such a wealthy contrast. Gold was for coins, sandstone, baroque gilding dripping off the walls of palaces. Yet with Kylo? Gold was signifying the animal within. The animal that suddenly wasn’t caged anymore.

“What entertains you so?” Kylo’s asking gently from across the bedchamber. He asks as he takes his shirt from the back and heaved it off his shoulders.

His muscles in his back twitch. Wincing in excited agony with his movements. Everything in his back felt so tight. Knitted together and shrinking. The meat and bulk of his always does this on a full moon night. Shrinks tight like knots in ropes and then lets out. His whole body taut before it swells bigger, more brute, more muscles, on his beastly ruts. On a feed his whole body shifts. More power. More carnality.

Iris shakes her head. Still looking at him fondly. “Just admiring.” Comes her answer. She clasps her hands against the cold leather covering of the book in front of her.

Kylo crumpled his shirt up and leaves it strewn across the chaise at the end of the bed. Dripping white linen to the floor where it draped. He pads across to her in only his breeches. Bare feet sweeping across the floors.

She feels a rush of excitement and love surge in her belly as he comes to stand beside her at the alcove. His towering body blocks her into the space shes sat.

“How’s that? My wife is always entitled to do her admiring from up close.” He smirks knowingly down at her. Shade falling slanted across his face. Playful darkness glitters in his eyes.

He takes her plaint hand and stoops to kiss its warmth, before he then presses it to the firm plane of his belly. The tiniest hint of softness lingers at his stomach. It’s in his skin. Because not a hint of it is on his body. He was formed of warriors and animosity and steel blades sharpened by frost. There’s no indication of him growing soft and pudgy the middle like she’s seen some men get. No lingering suggestions of middle age. Thread of silver working into his hair or an aching back. She’d be terribly endearing to him even if those things were on the cards.

She lays her book aside. He’s clammy. Hot and cold beating off him. Like rain spitting off stone. Or sun warming it. He’s both those things tonight. Whereas he’s usually cold as ice. A tempest burns in him. Seeking blood. Seeking relief. It’s such vast a change from the usual ice cold state of him.

She sits up and hangs her legs over the edge of the ledge. Both hands flat to his belly. He stands in the space she creates between her legs. He growls a little and watches her very closely as she moves. When her thighs part he can smell what lays at the apex of them. His nostrils flare with it. She blooms in the air like the finest flower. A flower cup of petals dripping thick nectar that he wants to seek out. Devour it later with fangs, lips, and fingers.

He wants her spilling in his mouth tonight. He can taste her already and it’s making it feel like his skin is crawling off his own back like a landslide.

Vicious doesn’t even begin to cover it-

His broad hands span across the back of her neck. Cupping. Feeling the frail bones of her that he loves so savagely. He loves her to a million pieces. It’s so intense in this mood he’s in. Underpinned by the beast, and the beast always obeys loyalty to their mate.

Tomorrow he could look at his darling Iris and see so very many things he loves about her. Tonight when he looks; all his mind can spit and snarl, is _mate_. _My mate. Mine._

His mind barks this at him as she peers up at him and gently caresses his stomach. Feeling the taut ridge of his iliac furrows strike down from his hips. The slanted slash of his ribs shadowed at his sides in the nights shade and the fires light. Mad that such beauty contained such destruction.

“Is Draegan accompanying you tonight?” She seeks. She doesn’t know much about demons and hungers they subscribe too.

He sinks his gaze into her grey cloudy eyes. The fire glimmers of them like soft ovals of cornelian. “He might be.” His smirk curls at the corners. Darkly.

A howl from the forest slithers slowly and steady across the horizon. Piercing upwards like a long thin dagger into the clouded black heavens. Kylo’s dark eyes suddenly swell with gold.

Iris turns back and looks out into the black night. “They’re restless too.”

Kylo’s tongue tips to his teeth. Stroking along his upper jaw. His gums hurt with spiking pain. Fangs so willingly desperate to slide right down. Bursting into his mouth. Ready to wet his dry tongue. It felt like it was coated in dust. Just ready for some hot sweet ichor to burst across his mouth. A shudder of need rolls right through him. Strains at his back and twists his spine. He can taste the night air sneaking across his tongue from the drafty window; he needs to be out in it. It’s too dangerous to contemplate what might happen if he remains here any longer.

The full moon is beckoning to every savage hunger. He’s bound by need to listen to it.

He crosses back to his undressing, kissing Iris’ hand as a consolation before he wanders off. He resisted the temptation to mouth at her pulsing wrist. Stroke his tongue along her veins and lick up the taste of her flooding under the paper skin like warmed sticky honey.

He swallows as he tugs on a dark shirt. Black linen tunic. It gapes so wide at his neck. The neckline sits down almost to his sternum. It was one he didn’t wear very often. Black makes the blood stains less visible. He tucks it into the waist of his breeches, and pulls on another pair of dark boots. He’s ready.

“Walk down with me, dove?” He dares across at her. Cuffing his sleeves as he asks. Looking longingly across at her. The burnt brown in his eyes starting to recede.

Iris sets her book aside and rises to a stand. She clutched her shawl around herself as she sticks her feet into her slippers and pads across the room to take his outstretched hand. They leave the warm red safety of their bedchamber and walk quietly through their dark castle.

Shadows bump and fracture along the handsome walls. Dark sneaks from every corner but it’s still an enchanting place. Iris had been scared of the lingering creepy hands of the shadows when she was a child. She feared what she didn’t know.

And now, as a woman, she loves madly the two men she knows who cling to them. Darkness isn’t terrifying anymore. She’s seen what beasts guard the shadowy gates of them. And it isn’t scary in the least.

They come to an exit which leads out to the forest, almost near the road ribboning around to the stables. And they aren’t alone anymore.

A tall figure of a demon awaits them by the opened door along the hallway. Cold night air flutters in. Wisps at the cold strands of his long hair. Flutters it back from his shoulders as he stands looking out into the dark woods. Up under the swaying clashing trees as the wind rakes through.

A single lit candelabra waits on the end table by Draegans side, by the open doorway where night spills in. Three long tapered creamy candles, the saffron orange flames shooting from their tips, shivers and dances on the tide of cool night air. A few scuttling leaves blow in over the fine tiles. Scampering over Draegan’s booted feet.

He looks like a manifestation of the full icy moon and the midnight sky. A dark grey shirt and dark breeches and even darker boots slip up his long legs. A cloak of matte black velvet swept over his shoulders and down to his ankles. This too flickers back on the wind that comes in.

His hair and his face are so caught by the flame of the light near him. He glows as pretty as the moon up in heaven. Looking like a dashing dark daydream as he stands there. He turns his eyes to them and smiles as they walk down the marble stairs to him.

The cold sets a cruel shiver of want in Kylo’s skin. His hunger for the night air.

Either that, or it was the sight of Draegan awaiting on them both; he can’t tell which it might be.

He’s so tense and poised on the edge of ferocity. Every hunger comes out to play; his lust especially. He wants to yank a brute hand in that fine hair and drink in the wine tasting kisses from his pretty lips.

Iris feels the cold in a similar manner too. How it kisses wickedly across her feet and up her nightgown. Her belly knots up with want and she’s aware of her nipples pressing painfully hard into her gown. Tasking and catching against the fabric. She moves her shawl to clasp tighter around her chest. Concealing the fact of arousal or her coldness. She can’t put her finger on what it might be-

The three of them finally moving in sync together. Every want laid out in the open. Ripe for the taking- and taken it would be.

Draegan smiles at his loves as they come ever closer. He catches the gold in Kylo’s eyes. Such a beautiful colour on him. He’s always thought so. His eyes flicker across to the enchanting woman by his side. Even simply dressed, the struggling moons light does her gauzy dress a lot of favours. Her hair is loose and she’s looking at him with such simple melting love in her eyes; it’s enough to make his smile grow wider.

“Evening.” His melodic voice warmly calls across to them as they stop mere inches away from him. The wind flouncing Kylo’s hair. Tugging on Iris’s skirts.

She recognised what a massive leap this is; the two of them together after all this time. Hunting together. As if all those hundreds of years haven’t passed between them. As if it’s been exactly no time at all.

It’s unspoken in the air. Twirling around in the wind that snakes around them all; how divine it is that these two men are in love again. No one appreciates this about them more than Iris does.

Kylo’s eyes are drawn outdoors by the nature he so badly wants to be in. The blood he needs to get bursting across his tongue and dripping down onto his chest. Slithering down his neck in dark black dribbles of warmth. Staining his white teeth as he sighs with the bliss of it all. Of drinking his greedy fill.

Iris admires the look both of them. Dressed up for the hunt. As men before them have done for centuries. The ceremony, pomp and tradition of it was cast aside. It’s a necessity here. Hunting is another way of life. Like getting dressed, or bathing oneself. It’s an instinct for these men, these two divine creatures.

“Go back to bed dove. I’ll be back in a little while.” Kylo says. Drawing her hand to tug her close. Laying a sweet kiss on her temple. Her pulse cradled to his pressing lips. He then draws back enough to kiss her goodbye on the mouth. A swelling beautiful slow kiss.

His lips are warm and their usual plumpness. So soft and addictive. Tonight they are almost warm. Silky wet as he grabs the back of her waist and deepens the kiss in an impossible new way that thrills her. Flares of delight squirm and crackle in her belly. She whimpers a little mewl when the sting of his sharpening teeth scrape her silky lower lip.

When he pulls back- he looks ravenous. Because he is. If that kiss didn’t fire his loins, he wasn’t human.

He wants to mouth at so many places before he goes. Her thighs. Her neck. The tasty satin between her legs. His cold nose against her blazing wet folds. The audible slurp of their bodies meeting. Hips slapping. Pelvis on pelvis smacking together. Bite the plump of her thigh to feel her jump. Feel her pulse throb and quiver her legs as he sucks over her fleshy femoral artery. He wants to lap her all up like she is a giant melting pool of woman; sweet, innocent, tart and irresistible. Cloying his tongue with her taste.

He pulls back. Cupping her face; she blushes. Draegan watched their kiss but sunk his eyes to the floor at the last second. The sight of it aroused him in ways he’s yet to explore. He was stiff with hunger too. The lustful one that correlated with Kylo’s own ruttish thoughts. For now? He’s just happy to be hunting beside his love again.

“Goodbye.” Iris says sweetly when Kylo untangled his hands from her neck and out her hair. He steps past her and smirks over at Draegan.

“I have the pleasure of your assistance this evening.” Kylo says to the demon.

“You do.” Draegan answers with a nod and a clear smile. He wouldn’t miss this for the world-

Kylo thanks him by stepping close and kissing him gently on the mouth. It’s a fairly quick kiss. Not savouring and not languid. It’s a little hungry and impatient. But no less loving. Iris sees Draegan’s chest swell the with unexpected excitement of it. His pale hand comes round and gently holds the back of Kylo’s waist. Silver rings clack and shimmer. Stones of them glint dully.

The sight of them kissing sparks flames in Iriss gut. Such a wrecking wave of attraction takes her. Such handsome men embracing openly in front of her.

Kylo pulls back and flashes another curling smile at his pale lover. “Try and keep up.” He taunts to Draegan.

Drageans smile grows to a grin. He chuckles with amusement as Kylo walks past him. His black clothes and hair swallowed up by the night he steps out of doors to be in. Cologne washes over them both as he departs. Brambles, and dark juicy plump fruit.

Draegan steps close to Iris. So close it makes her shiver when he takes her hand. A great swell of cold night air comes with him. The flavour of forest sits on her tongue. Enmeshed with the chill the dark brings. Pine needles swirled with Jasmine cologne and darkly rich pomegranate soap. The chalky one that sits its bare musky fragrance on his neck. The one he lathers over his chest.

She peers up as he drifts closer. His knuckles curl up and he brushes under her chin. Lifts her head up slightly. No matter how she cranes her neck she still has room for more. He’s so tall, his stance oft demands it. She meets his eyes. Piercing as ever. Tonight they are as sharp as pearl knives. Of course the full moon effects him too.

“Go back to bed, spark or else you’ll catch a chill. Go Keep warm. I’ll keep him safe.” He promises softly. Laying a sweet kiss to her brow that makes her spine rocket in bliss. Shooting to every outcrop of her being. Racing along every vein. He must be able to feel the shooting buds of pleasure that push up against his heavenly lips.

She brings her hands up and cups over the joint of his elbow of the arm where his fingers touch under her chin.

They softly slip apart from each other. Draegan gives her such a look before he walks off. One that steals all her breath in under a second. One that makes her soul warm and her belly melt right down to her toes. Pooling around her feet all molten and slushy.

It makes her take a sharp breath in. The way he looked at her was the way she’d always dreamed one day someone might look at her; the way Kylo does. With such devotion and desire in his eyes it makes her wonder how her buckling legs keep her standing. Whole body now prickled with goosebumps. And it’s definitely not the cold’s doing.

“Be careful-“ She can’t resist saying before he disappears into the night altogether. He turns at the doorway and smiles back. His eyes look like melting ice for her. She folds the shawl about herself

tighter. Every hair on her body standing on end. Needle straight and sharp.

She’s telling a demon of such terrible power to keep safe.

“I’ll always obey my lady’s commands.” He bows his head forwards to her in a courtly manner. Before he turns away and melts off into the night just as Kylo had. Dark clothes morphing into the night air.

Kylo was waiting for him at the thickest part of the tree line. Blending into the black of night with his whole frame. Hair curling and buffeting at his face. Long curls of raven black. Thrashing in the wind. His skin stood out like cream in the night air swirling around his big frame. His smile is lethal.

“You’ve missed this.” Kylo makes an observation as Draegan stalks his tall way closer. Shade and dull patches of light cast patterns over his skin as he wanders under the trees to come to his love. Piercing eyes of his so severe and stark. Blue diamonds lost to shadow. Kylo’s eyes are two gleaming discs of gold now. Red started to leech at the edges. Bleeding inwards.

Draegan stops a mere few inches from Kylo. His cloak sways into his lovers body.

“I missed everything about this.” Draegan explains. His warm fingers reaching over and tracing gently up his face. Catching hair through the drag of his fingers. Gold eyes watch him all the while. Slipping up over his cheekbone. Thumb laden with its usual hematite ring stroking his cheek.

Kylo smirks as he grabs for Draegan’s trim hips and pulls the man close to him. Tightly close. Bodies touching. Such lustful rampant energy surges through Kylo. He doesn’t know who he wants more. He wants his sweet wife or he wants this beautiful man again. He wants it all. The beast has a greedy temper. It will take everything in its path to sate it.

Kylo groans a growl as their chests and their legs rub together. Grinding their lower halves to incite friction. He was getting hard already and he’s not even come close to feeding yet.

“Feed first.” Draegan warns him. Cupping his cheek and giving him a firm kiss that reminds him of himself. That knifes edge creeping back into his voice. Though he can’t deny how ready he might be for what comes after the bloodshed.

Kylo deepens the kiss. Fisting a cruel hand in the nape of Draegan’s neck. Not letting him slide back. Fangs scraping against his demons pretty lips. Moans rumbling into each others mouths. Desperate and breathy.

Draegan pulls back from the kiss. Smiling. A crackle of noise far off in the forest takes his attention. Unmuffled voices slither through the trees. Feet not subtle about shifting in the undergrowth. Stumbling. Crashing. Drunkards taking a precarious route home.

Kylo twitched his head around too. To hear the men talking. Three of them. Drunken slobs. Their accents were unrefined and crude. One of them is relieving himself up against a tree as the other two pass around the bottle of weak as piss ale they were sharing. Dock workers on leave. Kylo’s had a better class of mud on the soles of his boots.

It turns his stomach. The scent of urine stale and piercing hot in his nose. The musk of sweat and the faint tang of sex hangs around the fat portly one. They all reek of alcohol and dirt. Filthy cowards.

One of them had a whore in town. Up against a wall of some tavern in the freezing cold. This man boasts; how he had savagely hurt her as he took her. Yanked her hair. Gave her bruises. Backhanded her across the face when she complained. He could almost taste the stinging pain one of them left across

her cheek.

The other two sneered as they watched. They laughed at her screams of pain. And told her when she asked for coin that they’d share her around and dump her body in the woods if she uttered one more word.

Rage begins to froth at the base of Kylo’s neck. He takes a deep breath and their scent is making his mouth water. Drunk blood has a sluggish taste to it. Slow and deep on his tongue. Delicious in the way opium was delicious to mortal men. He’ll enjoy ripping them to pieces. He’ll get satisfaction knowing he’s sent assaultive drunkards to their graves. He hopes the wolves come to enjoy the carcasses. Because they’d never be found again. No loss to the world.

He turns back to Draegan who smiles lightly at him. Raised a questioning brow. “Bon appétit?” He asks.

Kylo smirk is a terrible beauty as he rounds the tree. Slipping away. Draegan follows closely; the hunts afoot once more.

~

  
  
  


She never sleeps easily on these kinds of nights. Just like on their honeymoon in Scotland and the night she tried following him in the woods; she can’t rest until she feels his body in the bed behind hers. His arms seeking to hold her tight. Familiar coolness at her back. His cradling stone cold body under the crimson sheets.

She opens her eyes and her dim bedroom comes flooding back to her. Blood draperies pulled across the dark window. The wolves still bayed and called to the moon they couldn’t see beyond the clouds. Their cries were at first eerie to her. She felt like their calls raised dread to stab at her spine; but now she knows them. She knows it’s just because their master is hunting amongst them tonight.

She turns flat on her back. Shifts her head to look over at Kylo’s pillow. Brushes her fingers across it. The hollow space dented into it where his head had laid last night. She knows when she rests her head there that she’ll smell his cologne. An ever present lingering reminder of him. Brambles and pine forest.

She waits for her blood drunk vampire to return. Malformed by hunger she’d sent him out into the night and the moon leeched the animal out to come play under the stars. With the wolves howls ringing prettily in his ears. And Draegan by his side again-

She could see the hunger in their bodies but it was more so in their eyes as they stepped out of doors. Ancient loving and longing writ into them. Now it’s here again and she can see the influences. Draegan once again able to marvel at the beautiful vampire he’d created. Kylo’s able to once again adore the company of his maker.

She was still thinking about their kiss earlier. It repeated itself in her mind. How it made her feel to see them-

Curious. Intrigued. Aroused.

She twists onto her side. Facing inwards to the end. Sticky satin between her legs let her know she was absolutely still reminiscing about their kiss. Dragean was such a tall unyielding figure but she finally saw what could take him to pieces; embracing her or Kylo. He melted under their touch. Under the caress of their eyes and their mouths on him.

He’d only kissed her on the brow since the incident in his book room the other day before everything came spilling free. But she kept one little want clasped close to her heart. Sheltering it- she very much wanted to kiss him again.

Now the air between them was cleared. She wants to feel the delightful silk of his hair under her palms as she cups his shoulder and confidently pressed her lips to his beautiful mouth. Get drunk off the time-worn majesty and desire for her on his tongue. Taste the ruby-cherry wine he sips down so happily.

She opens her eyes and turns over to lay flat again. Clearly sleep would not be a sweetly loyal companion tonight. It seemed destined to evade her. She flips the covers off and shoved them down her hips. Unleashed her legs and kicks the crimson things down even further.

She decided to leave her little warm patch in the bed. She sits up and swings herself upright. She stands and pads softly across the thick rug to one of the cosy plump scarlet wing-backed chairs by the fire. She curls her arms around herself and eases back into its warmed cradle. The way it was slanted by the fire let the flames warm up the linen cloth of the seat.

She wraps her arms around her knees, which she rugs into the flat of the seat. Slanted sideways. Tucking them under herself. She watches the fire spit, crackle and curl soot up the chimney. Lapping heat upwards at the blackened brick. She stares at the crest carved into the stone in the middle of the stone mantel. The keystone of the middle gold brick swirling with a prancing wolf coat of arms.

She gets an odd sort of memory reoccurring to her- one of when she was walking in the snow. Coming back from Aunt Lavinia’s. Heavy basket hurting her arms. And then the huge enormity of a large black and expensive carriage roaring past her in the snow with its wheels churning out spits of frost. And that bloodied bright crest on the door had caught her eyes. Then she saw him-

Madness to think all that had passed between now and then. Between them, now worlds away man and wife. Holed up in this beautifully gothic castle. And now with a demon lover included to sweeten the deal. Iris can’t even imagine what she must have done in a previous existence to deserve these two men; Something worthy of divinity.

For that’s the way they both look at her- something divine and deserving of worship. It’s also the way she loves them right back.

She smiles as she watches the flames grow in the half. Ferocious. Burning away the logs. She leans her cheek against the chair and rests there. Closing her eyes for a moment and letting thoughts of them shift gentle through her mind.

Domestic happy things- wandering through the frosted rose gardens of Château Donnet with Draegan. The red rose he made bloom for her. Right in her hand. That almost kiss moment they shared there.

Sat by the fire at night, after dinner, in the dining hall. Curled up into Kylo’s chest. Hands pressed to his ribs. Listening to his voice rumble out a story for her. Voice moving through his chest as she had her ear to him. One of the hounds heads slanted onto his knee as he talked. And they were perfectly contented. Such simple sweet pleasures.

She’d love her husband even if he was a penniless pauper with nothing to offer her but the clothes on his back and the promise of passion eternal. Still Iris would have taken his hand. She’s no snob. She doesn’t require fancy dresses and a fine house to be happy. Just one mere, meagre thing which she never believed she’d be able to have-

Just love.

She smiles. Letting the fire warm her face as her cheeks crease with her mirth. She finally feels sleep starting to quietly take her. Her limbs grow heavy and drowsy. Night wearing on and on. Lids of her eyes swelling shut. Her worry for Draegan and Kylo had kept her sleepless and awake but it appears the hours are stretching on and she can’t resist it’s tug.

She’s drifting away when a slamming door makes her heart leap up and crush into her ribs. Jumping her with a terrible start. Her eyes fly open and she sees their dim bedroom again. It’s empty save for her. But it won’t be for long. The slam she heard was the door leading to their suite. Someone’s in the sitting room and moving fast judging by the sound of it.

The soft slap of bare feet on the parquet flooring leading to their room from the sitting room comes in rapid thundering succession. Thudding the tiles so hard they could break them. Crush them to dust.

The door to their bedchamber is rammed open so hard, Iris knows there must be a tonne of force behind it. And there is. A shadow filled the doorway. And then a naked man does.

It’s Kylo. Of course it’s Kylo. But it isn’t at the same time. This isn’t her tender husband who bought her flowers on her wedding day. Who bickers with their horse and has imaginary play fights with their seven year old ward-

This is an predatory echo of him.

Gold eyes find her cowering in the chair. Spooked out her skin and not just because of his entrance, but the state of him is something to be shocked by.

He’s big. He looks bigger somehow. Broader in the shoulders and more stocky with muscles. Protein, blood and hormones racing through him. Pounding his head. Throbbing in his veins.

He’s splattered in blood. Dirt crusted sticky up his calves and past his hands, almost up to his elbows. His lower face, tip of his nose and all drip drip dripping down his chest. Is blood. Ruby black and drying on him in crimson rivers.

And he’s erect. His girthy cock shifts between his legs as he walks. His sac drawn up, full and plump. Flushed a pretty pink-red. Precome slithers to the base of him. Sheening wetly on the skin. His fangs are down too. She sees them as he pants for breath. Along with the elongated claws that sprout from his fingertips. The ends of his thick fingers tapered into brutal looking talons.

She doesn’t any time to reel in shock at the sight of him. She’s sat up in her chair, eyes wide and trying not to tremble in fear at this familiar yet savage sight.

He’s quick in this form. He’s on her before she can even form so much as a syllable. Before his name even slips off her tongue, he storms to where she is and seals a fist into the front of her nightgown and hauls her up by tugging on the cotton. Yanking her out her seat. Ripping the seams.

“Kylo-“ She squeaks nervously as he wrenched her to her feet and into his chest. She stands there like a statue as his hands reach for her neck. It was terrible but she almost flinches when those hands drift close to her skin. It’s shocking to see him like this.

He doesn’t even process her protestations. He’s too far gone. This isn’t her man here.

He’s growling. It sounds like a slow rumble of thunder moving from out his chest. Coming from deep within. His hands yank at her neckline and destroy it. Tearing it to strips off her body. Shrieking fabric ripping and shredded. Dispersed with her little whimpers on the air.

She doesn’t know how she can still be aroused by his getting her naked when he’s so out of touch of himself. It’s terrifying.

_Thrilling-_

She cowers a little before him when he gets her naked. A pleased smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. His eyes look morbidly bright.

She gasps again when he grabs her hard around her waist. Moving her around with one arm. He grips her hips and slams her face down on the bed. In the middle of the mattress atop the mussed covers. His hand doesn’t leave her neck as he mashes her front to the mussed covers. Bends her over and growls at the feeling of his hot leaking cock prodding into her ass.

He climbs on the bed behind her. Growling. It stings when one of his hands claw a grip into her breast. The other tightens around her neck from the side. Clamping down and squeezing. Air starting to choke out her mouth with her yelps. She tries to prize her small fingers in-between his hand and her skin. She can feel how fast her pulse is pumping with worry. Certain he can feel it too. He lives for that sound.

She cries his name loudly in panic when his hand flies up and fists in her hair. He left raw marks where his nails scratched her neck. Claws wrapping around the soft strands of her hair now instead and pulling her hair back. Arching her back into his body as she’s on all fours.

His snarling is getting louder. She can feel his massive dirty chest moving sweating bleeding against her back. He’s so clammy warm he’s dripping sweat and dirt all over her. His knees nudge her legs apart wide and his drooling cock nestled into the cradle of her ass. Hot, thick and dripping as it rests weeping precome against her thigh. So close to her sex. He could smell how wet she was. He could hear it slowly trickling out of her.

He hums a low deep sound of pleasure when he starts rutting his hard length against her wet sex. She tries struggling around to face him. He pins her down one handed to the bed to stop the squirming. A warning.

“Kylo-“ She nearly sobs. “Please. It’s alright, _please_.” She gasps. One hand going over his in her hair. His pull on it was starting to sting.

He doesn’t gild the lily. He came here with one purpose and he’ll have her.

He splits her tight cunt with a single vicious thrust. Splits her on his cock. Sinks himself as deep as it will go.

Doesn’t stop when her muscles squeeze around him deliciously. Wet enough for his liking. But not quite ready. Fucking her so deep and hard she feels the pressure of it behind her belly. He’s fucking her open and resistance was futile.

Her soft yell of pleasure mixed with the pain at being stretched so calls loud throughout the scarlet room. Bounces off the walls and comes back to her. It’s making him leak more. Growing harder as he throbs inside her shivering clenching cunt. She can feel his cock dribbling precome inside of her. Come the end of the evening she will be filled with him.

Tomorrow she’ll be sore. He’s dragging against places that he’ll pound sore. Her body quivers around the plunge of him. Afire for more. Shaking. Mouth open she feels wet drool from her gaped lips start to slip down her chin.

She’s not the only one. He watches above as he fucks into her. The bow of her back. On all fours for him. Cunt stretched open. Pink and glistening and perfect. She smells so good. She tastes even better. He’s drooling too. Wet sheens off down his fangs. Disturbing trails in the smeared blood. He feels her wetness leak down his thighs. How it strings between her legs.

He pulls harder on her hair. Makes her yelp, louder. The sweetest sound. And her pulse pumping more violent. Fired up with her terror. That’s making him growl too. He starts to shift his hips and steadily pump his cock into her.

His hips slap into her ass; a heavy downwards stab that makes her back arch more. He’s growling again. Shifting. Listening to her cunt squelch around him. It pleased him.

Mate. Mate. _Mine_.

She feels his warm nose prod into her neck. Growls and snarls right by her ear. Blood and sweat smudges across her throat.

“Oh.” She gasps in shock and then in realisation.

He wanted a feed from her. He’s nuzzling before he sinks his fangs in.

She feels his lips open against her neck. Chuffing as he started to grind his cock into her once again. Loving the slick sounds they made together. How dripping wet she was. She wants to moan with how good it feels. Face pulled into an expression between pleasure and pain.

The wet glide of his cock pounding in her sex felt incredible but she doesn’t know how to be free of the fear of him yet.

He yanks her head further to the side and she cries again. He snarls like she’d hurt him. Displeased. Iris can feel how when she screamed, a great glob of wetness leaked from his cock into her. Not only does he enjoy her screams. But they arouse him further. His precome drips ever steadily into her.

Her mouth gapes when she feels the needle stab of his fangs rest at her neck. Perching. Ready. Ready. So ready now to slice into skin-

A sharp call of his name from the doorway makes Kylo’s temper flare up wickedly.

“ _Kylo!_ ” Comes a cross call.

He paws one of her breasts in his large grip. The other resumes it’s locked position around her throat. He guides his hard cock to rest at the opening of her wet sex. Ready to plunge in and take what’s his.

Kylo glowers at the doorway with his gold eyes. He beast didn’t appreciate being interrupted on claiming his mate.

Draegan enters the bedchamber from the dark hallway beyond. Wisping in like a pale spectre. Smoke on mirrors. He walks along with his blue robe flowing out behind him. Looked like great silken angels wings hanging down his back.

His chest and feet are bare. Breeches of gun metal grey cling up to his trim hips. A glass goblet of dark wine in his other hand. He stands it down on the dresser just inside the door. It slams shut after him as he crosses to stand at the end of the bed. Jasmine and night airs scent comes in with him.

Kylo covers his wife and roars a growl at Draegan like he’s an intruder. Moves and wracks though his chest so deep, Iris feels it’s bassy tone vibrate into her where they are pressed skin to skin.

Dragean’s eyes look icy to say the least. Iris cowers under Kylo’s growling. Whereas he doesn’t look the least bit scared.

“She is your wife. _Not_ your prey.” Draegan comments coldly. Kylo’s eyes narrow at the demon.

“You’re being greedy. Remember all she is to you.” Dragean talks over Kylo’s mauling of her.

Kylo grumbles and his hand and mouth suddenly slip away from her neck. His claws drift away, touching the centre of her back, raking down. Span of his hand reaching all the way across.

She winces a little and a modest yelp tumbles from her mouth. Kylo’s bared teeth snap sudden around a growl.

Iris’ watery eyes find Draegan. He can read all that’s quaking through her in that teary look. She almost pleads up at him to understand what’s happening. She looks at him in a way that lets him know she’s grateful he’s here.

He sinks to a crouch by the bed and reaches across, leaning over to gently cup her face in his hand. His rings are stark cold and his hand is warm.

“You need to try and remain calm, spark. Your mewls and cries only excite him further.” He explains.

Iris nods shakily in understanding. Trembling. One with the way Kylo was behaving. And the second with how he was here again- watching them naked together. It’s all so gloriously sordid.

“I won’t let any harm befall you. Iris. You’re mine.” He tells her as he shifts further onto the bed. His fingers find her palms on the red covers and slip through hers to hold them. She thanks him with a look. A private of moment of eye contact between them.

Kylo savagely cuts their tenderness short.

She feels his claws seize around her hips. Flesh squeezes out inbetween his fingers grip. Soft. Pliant. Sweet.

When he slaps his hips to her again the burning drag makes her call out a soundless cry. Face splitting with the pleasure of it. Voice cracking to ash in the back of her throat.

Kylo grabs her closer. If that was even possible. Yanks his forearms over her thighs and pulls her up. Still inside her and burrowing even deeper. Brings her up onto her knees in front of him. Dragged across the bed and harder onto his cock. Fucking sharper.

His mouth settles in her neck. Big hand splays over her warm belly as she hooks one elbow around his sweaty back. She could barely hold his skin he’s so slick with sweat. The way she arches made her back curve and her breasts stick out.

Kylo halo’s a hard nipple between two fingers - claws. Just shy of being too sharp. Of cutting flesh with his talons. Gripping her tit in one palm. Toying with it.

Tiny growls muffle into her neck. His other hand slips into the meaty flesh of her ass. Pulling her down and back and forth onto him. Railing hard into her.

Iris opens her eyes as she feels a weight resettle at the end of the bed. The mattress dipping with it. She huffs and pants and focuses on how good his cock feels inside her. But when she looks down the bed, Draegan sits resting against one of the mahogany posts. Smiling at watching them and sipping his wine. Watching his beast claim their mate.

He’s watching them. Every single movement. The way her breasts sway and jolt with Kylo’s movement. Her dry hair sticking much to warm to her sweaty neck. Cheeks pink and hot and she’s dewy with exertion. Kylo towers at her back in all his muscular glory. Dwarfing her little body with so much animosity.

He tips the glass to his lips and swallows back a great sip of cherry wine. Almonds and bitter red berries lacing with the sweetness into his tongue. He drinks and admires his lovers with adoration and dark lust in his blue eyes. Shaded ocean shifting over their naked skin. Kissing along every inch of them- his gaze spears warm like the fires heat. It makes heat pool in the base of Iris’ throat. She feels it. Crawling into her cheeks too.

His eyes are ravenous when Iris tips her head right back. Hitting Kylo’s chest. Hair sticking to him and snagging on the sweat and dirt of him. Kylo keeps fucking her, turning his eyes forwards as his hand roams from her belly up to her collarbones. Stroking there before he fists her neck again. Squeezes the breath right out of her. As his cock shunts it out from right below her belly. She’s breathless and drowning in pleasure.

Draegan’s smiling as Kylo’s bright gold eyes open and watch him from beyond the tumbled nest of her hair. Over her shoulder. Eye contact sparks between them during the animal act.

Kylo watches Draegan as his hand drifts down, pasts her breasts, idly cupping them before dropping to her belly again. And even lower-

Draegan’s breath comes short when he watches Kylo’s big claws rake through the dark curls that guarded the triangle of her sex. His fingers dip lower still. Sharply rubbing over her clit. Iris cries in pleasure as he wets his fingers with the slick that’s leaking from them both.

The animal can hardly comprehend Draegan’s lust. It’s just the alpha showing off it’s beautiful mate. Reminding him whose she is. Whose cock she’s cumming and crying on.

Having finished his wine, now he’s rather more drunk on something else. He rises up to his knees and moves across to Iris as she slumps down weakly on the bed in Kylo’s hold. He was so aggressive and strong it’s almost too much for her to keep up with. The stamina of him is frightening.

Draegan quells her fears. Helps support her through Kylo’s beastliness.

She whines when he comes close. Whimpers when she can knot her fingers into his silk gown. Try and wrench him closer cause it’s so good. She’s drooling and babbling and she’s so desperate to orgasm it’s insane. It’s coming so fast on her she can feel it. She wants to sob and burst.

Draegan smiles down at his little spark. Naked and sweaty and being fucked into his chest so her nipples graze the hot skin of him. Body jolting into his from the feral ferocity of Kylo’s hips. Draegan talks softly to Iris.

“Sweet girl he’s glutted himself on three men tonight. He will fuck you til you scream yourself silent.”

He tips up her chin and whispered his words as a dirty secret onto her lips. Kissing her gently after he finished speaking. Iris moans into his mouth. Brows pulled together in the middle in her pleasure.

He cups the side of her neck. Silver rings on his hands stinging cool on his skin. She’s so warm the sting of them is almost a sharp pain. She hums into his mouth as he deepens the kiss. Such power. Yet he’s so gentle.

She musters up enough brain power to relax into his hold. Both their hands are on her now. Draegan’s at her neck and cupping around her back. Holding her scapulae. Kylo’s are clawed anchors in her hips as he fucks her onto himself like she’s no more than a little toy to be played with. He’s huffing and dripping sweat down her back. Draegan is as collected and poised as he ever is. Drinking in her lips.

He takes his time to kiss her right. Takes it slowly even though he can taste the pleasure in her blood and it’s making him harder by the second. He still eases her into it slowly. So much to take. The devil has claimed her mouth. But his hound is rutting her senseless.

He softly brushed his tongue along her lower lip. She answers in kind. Letting her lips fall open and giving him everything. All of her. Tears pressed out the corner of her eyes because it feels so phenomenal that they’re all here. They’ve all reached this point of safety and comfort.

Draegan breaks away breathless with a smile and draws her hair off her sweaty neck. Mouthing along her cheekbone and onto her neck. She’s reduced this orderly poised man to an aroused, hard, mess. Even his kisses now turn sloppy.

He’s at her neck and she’s beating out heat and he tastes the rhythm of her pulse kicking in her neck. Thudding into her bliss filled veins. “Isn’t he beautiful like this? So uncompromising. So vicious.” He sighs against her ear. Hand slipping from her shoulder around to her breast and teasing her with brushing touches.

“How beautiful it is to see when a beast claims his mate.” He smiles against her collarbones. Slipping down her body with his eyes closed and deep sighs leaving him. It’s like he’s worshipping at an altar. And he is.

Let her body be his temple. Let him worship in the steeple of her arched legs. His call to prayer in every one of her sex hazed sighs. The way she moans for him Kylo’s fucking her. That’s better to him and more worthy of divinity than any holy relic put on this earth.

Kylo appears to be close- thankfully, she couldn’t take much more. She’s dripping down onto the bed. She can’t hold out much longer like this. His cock is too good. His hips too powerful. She feels bruised and the thrusts are starting to make her tremble with the need to climax.

Kylo drops her hips and seized her arms. Ripped them away from Draegan. Holding both of them behind her. Using them as leverage to pull her off and on his cock.

She screams anew when Kylo starts ramming deep. Deep deep. Into places she never knew resides inside her. He’s tearing her apart. It’s agony. It’s everything. The carnal rutting is bringing her to unravel. Falling apart piece by tender piece. She was a woman she was supposed to like being made love to. She was supposed to adore quiet affections and neat wedded passion.

No one had never told her how much bliss it was to be so wholly devoured by love. Love that aches and twists and nothing will ever be the same again. He grabs her hair. Her neck. Squeezes his fingers around her throat to feel the air bleed out, and tugs on her locks until she hisses. He gives her no doubt as to his passions. He crushed her with it.

This was lust that stirs with all it has. Cracked apart bone and drove out any reckoning beyond it. Giddy swelling consuming love and it’s making this carnal sex all that much sweeter.

Right now that lust is all that Kylo can think about. It’s all that’s dripping off his tongue as much as sweat is dripping off his body onto Iris. Whines trip unhindered now from her mouth. She can’t stop them. She lives for each motion of his hips. Each slick tug and drive of his cock defiling her in all the best of ways.

Her hips raised to him. She can’t help it. She shoves herself back to meet the pounding thrusts that’s setting holy fire in the pit of her belly. Kylo arches his shoulders. Growling. Between slaps of their sexes and hips snapping together, meeting in obscene liquid slaps, she can hear him grunting.

“ _Mine_.” Or something that sounded like “Mate.” In-between great chuffing breaths as he watches his cock sink in and out. Glistening from her cunt. Her cream slicked all around his length. Slipping down his sac too. He can feel it in a puddle under their knees stabbed into the bed. So much wet soaking the covers.

She sobs when Draegan’s clever fingers take her face and bring her up to be kissed again. She’s sobbing now. Stinging eyes that let her know tears are falling. Legs shuddering. Fighting to keep still as Kylo used her.

“You take the beast so well, my little spark.” He sighs against her mouth. She’s crying and he’s kissing her.

Climax has never been more obliterating.

She’s worried her heart will stop. It thuds so hard and loud that she’s worried it will tremble away to ash in her chest. She’s moaning and screaming but no sound comes out her dry throat. Hair slapping her back as Kylo rails her through the crescendo of pleasure.

She writhed but she was helpless to go anywhere. Her husband has got her trapped and a demon is in the oath of her escape. But why would she ever want this to end?

Her wrists are still caught in his iron grip. Cock shoved as deep in her cunt as he can get. He rams and shoved into her as their orgasms break over them. Rushing free, like a gushing tide breaking savage hard upon the rocks. Dashed. Destroyed. Ravaged.

Iris feels herself clench around him so tight. He’s in her belly. In her chest it feels more like- stretching her open too wide. Drag of his curved cock head stroking places that make her insides feel like they’d burst.

He snarls and grabs her arm so hard he almost breaks the delicate bones in half. Because the way her sex snaps down on him makes him growl and another load of cum shoots deep. Drenching the place he’s just filled.

She feels the heat of him flood her belly. Pumping inside her body as he jerks and shudders and growls until every last drop of him is gone. There was so much and she sobs when it doesn’t end. He pours in to her and out of her. He rams deep just once more, addicted to the feeling- he doesn’t ever want to pull out this warm sweet cunt.

He snarls in satisfaction. Head tipped back to the ceiling. He looks down again. Shadowed hair falling over his gold eyes. So bright in his sweating bloodied face as he smiles down at the sight of her absolutely drenched with him. Leaking dripping creamy white down to the cotton sheets.

He smiles wider and it’s almost morbid with all the dried blood across his chin and gleaming sticky on his chest.

He released her arms and they almost flopped to the bed she’s so weak. Head still foggy with bliss. Shoulders straining. Bones hazy and melted to water in her body. She feels entirely limp. Sagging into Draegan’s shoulder is the only thing keeping her up. She’s burning up and freezing all at once. Such a swirl of emotion and pliant from an orgasm that shook her to her core. Fingers slack on her deadweight arms.

Mouth open and she’s ashamed to notice she drooled slightly on Drageans shoulder. Nearly biting his skin as she came. It’s a good job he wasn’t kissing her as she did. She might have bitten through his lip.

She stays on her knees, Draegan stroking her hair and laying kisses onto her shoulders. Up her neck. Kissing her sweat slicked skin. Sharing it with her in a scorching slow kiss.

Kylo grunts as he lets his cock slick out of her weeping cunt. Shuffling back a little on his knees. Enough to pull out of her.

It appears he isn’t done just yet-

Hands and claws yank for her waist. Spinning her around capably. Brute muscles bunched in his arms. He chuffs a animal sounding snark as he flips her over. Gets her back on the bed and then she’s peering up at him. His gold eyes sweep up her stomach and over her leaking and very well used sex. Such a pretty flushed pink.

She looks up at Kylo with lingering laziness in her heavy eyes. He’s sapped her energy but he needs more- wants more. Will take more.

He moves closer to her on his knees. Hands spread wide on her thighs. Spanning all of the beautiful soft flesh. Any other night, he’d use his tongue on her now. But he hasn’t the patience. The animal is too hungry.

“Kylo-“ She says his name hoping it will sober him. But he remains staunchly her blood drunk monster.

One hand leaves her thigh and grips around the slick cum stained base of himself. Girthy and throbbing in his hands. He guides it to her cunt once again and sinks to the hilt in one push.

Iris’ head tips back to the bed. Elongating her neck - a dangerous game to play with this beast on the loose. She fists the red covers and the white sheets in both clawed tight hands. Her muscles burn and hurt in her arms. Shaking. Trembling. Nails biting the fabric. Scraping against the threads like her life depended on it.

Such a body encompassing shudder of pleasure blazes in the pit of her belly.

A slow groan leaves her mouth. His cock delivering a gut-punch to her lower body that leaves her brainless and gasping. Her whole lower body feels distended by him. He’s knocking everything out of her and nothing can be put back in place again.

He lifts her. Effortlessly. Claws digging, hunting for the soft of her ass. He cups the softness of her there in both palms. Cradles her off the bed and let’s her bent legs fall over his straining forearms and strong arched elbows. He feels like warm stone under her. So powerful and enduring. Her hands leave the covers and scramble for his shoulders.

He hisses at the sting of her nails tearing into his shoulders. That only spurs him on. Sweet little glimmers of pain makes his cock throb harder. They both feel it twitch inside her.

Draegan continues on in his vein of voyeurism. He can tame this beast. But he knows it’s too dangerous to get close to him just yet. It’s always easier to let him expend his energy and lust before trying to have a hope of reaching him. He rests back against the post and watched the animal have his reign over their little spark.

The nights of full moons belonged to such beasts as these. He’s always thought so.

Iris’ belly starts to hurt where he saws into her so un-mercifully. Driving beautiful sounding wails from her mouth which increased with the speed he moves his hips.

Kylo licks over his lips - Plump and wet. And his fangs - still bloodied.

Drool hanging in a string down his chin as he looks down her delicious body. Tits bouncing. Nipples hard as little pebbled pink cherry stones. Ass quivering under his hands as he fucks. She’s completely in his hold. Skin stretched taut to its limits. And his thrusts are only getting harder. Knocking the will out of her. Milking her silk walls for everything she had to give.

The mattress is shaking and slamming under his ferocity. On his knees and his back is bowed as he fucks her beyond oblivion. The bed frame is creaking any groaning and the air is muggy. Wet with sex and heat. It’s sweat, lust and musk.

Draegan likes watching their joined shadows dance up the exposed stone walls from the roaring fire in the half. The shape of his lovers in situ. In desire. It’s enough to make him light headed to watch. To be eclipsed by every essence of their fucking.

Kylo doesn’t bother to drag out his rut this time. He goes hard and deep. Vicious. Humming in pleasure and pants chuff past his fangs as he drags her body onto his cock to make her cum again. Using her like she was his own fist.

His thighs clench and close as he cums again. She can’t take it either. She throws her head back and sobs her mercy as she gushed over him. Back arched, legs spasming over his arms. Cunt a solid fist around his cock. A pink satin vice.

He spills into her womb again with a deafening roar. Muscles all tensed and poised for his bliss. And he cums in powerful body aching succession of thrusts. A long flush of heat spreading low in her belly. She feels more leak out than could have gone inside her. So much. Too much. The sheets are patched and slippery with it now.

The thin liquid spurt which signified her climax drips and drips over Kylo’s lap and he delights in the feeling of her pouring down his sac and staining his thighs with her sticky sweet cum. Sweet as rose oil to the taste.

He sets her down to the bed when he finishes with her for the second time. Making noises like purrs in satisfaction now.

She drops like a sack of boneless skin to the bed because there’s so little strength left in her now. He’s sapped it out of her with two orgasms that stole away her soul. She swore it was now a ghost-like wisp roaming around the ceiling. The very essence of her drifting around their bedchamber like a spectre.

She sags back into the covers. Sweating and spent. Thighs on fire and quivering and twitching. His big hands and claws slip off her. Leaving raked red marks - lust marks - that she barely feels. Those coupled with her flushed skin and bruises he’s pressed all over her hips, ass and thighs. She’ll absolutely feel him tomorrow. Dark blooming petals of bruises painted all over the pale canvas of her skin.

He kneels, sat up at the head of the bed. Fine pillows crushed under his body. Cock still hard and proudly throbbing. Slicked wet in their releases. Slapping to his stomach. So full of blood. How he’s not spent yet she doesn’t know. She was nearly pushed to the brink.

Kylo can’t be apart from his mate for long. He crawls down low and slinks over her body like a panther. Sweat soaked chest covering her own.

He rubs his hips into her spread trembling legs. Cock grinding wet against her fluttering cunt. Silky lips dripping along him. Parting to glide along his turgid length. She groans when she feels him pulse against her. No heartbeat in him. But she feels how he weeps more wet cum down into her. He’s _still_ aroused.

Draegan dryly chuckles. Shifting one sticky coil of hair off her neck. “Beasts don’t go easy on you in their quest for pleasure my dear.” He croons.

He’s refilled his glass. It rests sloshing and sweetly dark against his thigh where he sits. Long legs draped off the bed. His own cock was stiff in his breeches. But he will ignore it. After this she’ll be too sore to walk. Let alone have the energy or wherewithal to fuck a demon.

Loving two devils can after all, wear such a sweet mortal thin. They are more animals than they are men.

She opens her eyes as Kylo holds himself above her on his palms. Nudging his nose at her cheek and then his lips are at her mouth to gruffly demand a kiss. Iris lets her lips sink to his. Knowing she’ll taste the copper of blood that lingers there. She doesn’t resist his wanting to kiss her.

He grunts her name gently against her mouth before he slowly traps her into a languid hot kiss. “Iris.”

She doesn’t mind that it’s messy and bloody. Teeth clacking against her own. But he drinks her in like he’s still starving. She gets drunk off the sensation of his big plump lips softly nibbling at her own.

She brings her lead arms up to lift around Kylo’s neck. His hands grip at her biceps as he bows his body to the frame of her smaller one. He’s left sticky red smudges and sweat and dirt dropped all over her. It they kiss like there’s nothing but air and soft rose petals between them. Taking all the time in the world. Iris forever loves how he twists his head. Tip of his nose slanting into her cheek.

Such a beautiful sight for Draegan to witness.

Even more so when Kylo sinks his front to hers. Hands flat now to the bed by her shoulders. He pushes his cock into her cunt once more. Just one more. Growls like a prepossessing caveman.

Her back arches again. He’s fucking into the sloppy mess of her with shallow stabbing thrusts. Not as brutal as before but he still moves quickly. Powerfully.

Iris wants to squirm away. It’s so much. Too much. The ache of his girth starts morphing into slick bliss the more he moves. So wet and sloppy inside her with the amount of cum there is. The amount he’s poured into her and the amount she’s made from his using her.

“Kylo- I-ah.” She whines for him.

It’s deliriously good. Past the point of no return. And after this there is no going back. She’s let the beast have its fun with her. And now it will always seek for the companionship and intimacy of fucking its mate.

He looks down at her. His beautiful bride. As he shunts his hips up into her. Body bouncing up and back on him as he grinds. Low and slowly powerful. His hips punctuate his thrusts with earnestly intent meaning. He writes his need for her into every snap of their hips meeting. He composes fine sonnets into the way his eyes drift and carve along her skin.

He has to be near her. He buried his huffing mouth in her neck. Groans and grunts his needy growls into her throat. She hears his claws stab holes into the bedding as he grips it in fistfuls.

He’s fucking her up the bed. Because she just doesn’t have the strength to push back on him now. He does all the work. The exertion is all his. He’s flushed from his neck to his belly button. Clammy skin sticking to hers. Mud smeared all over her delicately pretty skin.

Her legs can barely summon the strength to meet and clasp around his pumping hips. Feels his pelvis as it gyrates under his skin. Muggy breath from him fogging up her neck. Pleasure erupts in too much all over her.

Climax bears down on them so quickly it’s shocking. Suddenly they’re both gasping and it’s a maddening rush as he rails her hard to chase his pleasure. Hers was evident. She pours over his cock again like sweet tropical rain. So much wet slurps out of her. He fucks her through to the other side of bliss with it.

He eases out every last drop. Finally slowing to a stuttering stop against her. Growling and grabbing for her weak neck as he came. Filling her for a third time. He says her name. He says it and repeats an ode to his ownership of her.

“Iris.” He pants. “ _Mine_.” He kisses down her collarbones letting his words trail into her skin. It appears the animal carnality had loosened its influence on him. It’s been gripped harshly by the scruff and shaken loose.

The bedchamber hums with the new strain of silence taking it over. There’s only the wolves cries howling to the full moon in the distance. The sound shatters against the cold glass of the window. And the fires dulled roar now cracking in the chimney.

Iris’ eyes swell shut. Her head is no more. Her lisp are dry and her throat is hoarse. Her legs are twitching still and she reckons it won’t stop anytime soon. And the aches of desire will soo twinge into sharp pains between her legs-

She can barely register when Kylo drags her into his hold.

All she knows and feels is a gentle hand with sharp claws holding over her belly. A rush of silk gliding over the bed rasps in her ears. That hand slips lower. Stroking her like an item of worship. Claws dragging a sharp tease over her soft flesh.

Flesh he could so easily rip if he wasn’t careful. And tonight he had not been anywhere near careful with her.

Her face tugs into an unbelieving expression when Kylo’s fingers stroke over her mound before slipping deep inside her. Pushing in gently. Claws receding. He growls at the delightful squelch that comes from sinking into her deep. Keeping all of his spend exactly where he needed it to be. Plugged deep inside her.

He settled between her legs. The peachy soft things they are nestled around his shoulders as he muscles his way between her shaking thighs. Lays his head on her thigh. Licks up creamy drips of them that had spilled down her inner thighs.

He can hear her heart. Her pulse as it snaps and beats all over her. In her quivering legs. It’s loud as thunder beating out her neck. He can hear it all- it’s calling to him. But his need for it has shrunk right down.

She can barely shift her head off the pillow where it’s sunk. One arm folded up by her head. Whining gently. Voice so feeble with the feeling of Kylo’s fingers inside her. Slow obscene squelches seem viciously loud on the quiet air. Air in their bedchamber is now all sex, heat and musk. A faint echo of the pine trees spills in from the window. But tonight, appropriately, other hungers echo in the air.

Sleep comes heavily upon her. Even with the feeling of Kylo still plundering her cunt with his fingers. She’s so drained of energy, slumber doesn’t hesitate to take her now.

Kylo lifts his head from where he was suckling red bites and sloppy kisses around her thighs. Looking up her body. All the pale climes of her. The round of her tits spilling to the side. The mound of her belly and then downwards to her cunt. Arms splayed in rest. One folded up by her cheek on the pillow, palm outwards. The other curled around her belly. Sheened in sweat and her skin is cooling in the dark air as the fire roars lower and lower.

It’s the only thing in the bedchamber that’s still lit. Even the candles drip steadily down to ivory waxy puddles in their holders. Flames long sing fizzled out. Leaving trails of wispy grey to float to the ceiling. Hazy and dark.

Reluctantly, Kylo draws his fingers from the blazing clutch of her heat. Admires the mess the beast made of her. Such a pretty mess. A pretty _claimed_ mess. So beautiful laid out on the dark bed. Entwined like a sleeping goddess in linen white sheets. His scent seeping out all over her. Covering hers.

He clambers up the bed and nestled next to her. Purring nearly as he rubbed his face and nose into her neck. Humming in bliss with the taste of the delicious sweat all on her neck. He settles next to her. On his side curled around her like a big protector. Curling around his mate. His cum stained fingers leave wet smears across her belly where he clutches onto her.

Draegan is still only just watching from the end of the bed. Wine low in his glass. Piercing eyes sweeping over his perfect pair of lovers.

“Much more and you’d have broken her.” Draegan comments easily from his place. Lounging comfortably in his position of voyuerism. Robe falling open across his alabaster chest. The firelight cradled in the divots of his collarbones and his ribs. Caught there like pools of cornelian.

Kylo’s gold eyes open lazily and peer down at the demon. His nose still shoved deep into iris’ neck. He grumbles against her skin. For now, he’s still clammy. Churning with heat and cold. Soon the heat of this full moon in his blood will fade away.

Draegan stands from the bed and places his wineglass down on the end table by the armchair. Kylo watches him move. The graceful sway of his hair spilling down his back. His robe fluttering out at his sides. A great swish of dark cerulean silk. Unfurling out behind him like a tumbling ribbon of a blue riverbed.

“I’ll go to my chambers. I don’t think you pose anymore danger to her now.” He calls softly across the bed. His words softer than the warm quilts wrapped around his two lovers on the bed. His fierce one and his little spark. He stays lingering at the corner of the bed. Satisfied to sneak away and to leave them to their well earned rest.

Kylo’s head abruptly lifts. “Stay.” He frowns lightly. Still clinging onto His sleeping Iris like she was his lifeboat. His head on her pillow as he drowns himself in her scent.

Draegan stops and looks across at his vampire. Dark was starting to swirl back into his golden eyes. They glitter like rough gems in sunshine in the half dark. Peering over at him. Desperately. Almost mournfully that he should be leaving them so soon.

“ _Stay_.” He repeats longingly.

He smiles gently and relents.

Turns back and comes around to the side of the bed. Kylo’s side. Kylo watches hungrily as Draegan undresses. A spark of devilry in his eyes when he watched the tall demon peel off his grey breeches. Kylo’s eyes shamelessly linger on the twin marble columns of Draegan’s meaty upper thighs. He doesn’t intend too but he selfishly stares at his large cock and his plump sac too.

The musty and clean, all male, scent of him drifts across to Kylo’s senses. Jasmine and warm skin and soap.

Dragean knows when he’s being looked at like a piece of meat. “You’ve had quite enough tonight, my fierce thing.” He says chidingly with a small smirk as he wrapped his robe fully about himself. Tying the cord around his waist. He always did sleep naked or in silks. Silks were his favourite.

He sinks gracefully onto the bed. Cosying up beside Iris. Lifting the covers over his feet and sliding between them. Sheets that still reek of sex and heat. He doesn’t mind. He likes his carnal creature.

He leans over Iris, kisses her brow, and loves past her to give kylo a sweet goodnight kiss. Cups the side of his blood stained face and presses a plump sweet kiss to his addictive lips.

He can’t get enough. Tonight after Kylo had fed. Dragean just couldn’t resist grabbing him and kissing him like a wild savage to taste the blood gushing all over his mouth. Dripping off his tongue. They licked and fed it to each other off the others lips. Kissed with tongues and dallied about like silly infatuated teenagers crazy with hormones and lust. Grinding grabbing hips and letting the other feel how hard they’re getting.

It was all the full moons doing. And because his Kylo is just so beautiful when he hunts. Dripping blood across such stocky muscles. There’s not much in this world that makes Draegan go soft in the knees - but that is one of them.

He’d deal with the blood and the stickily drying dirt in the morning. Rouse early and summon some hot water for a lavender bath, and heal any cuts with some salve ointment.

Sleep is always a very sporadic companion to him. He only needs a few hours here and there. He won’t however, pass up the opportunity to be near them. To wake up with them in the same bed was a heaven he never thought he’d come to be a part of.

Wrapped up in the heaven of them.

After Draegan kisses Kylo. He leans back and props his head on one elbow. Idly stroking his fingers along Iris’s shoulder that was closest to him. Fingertips glide along her dewy skin. He takes note of all the bruises littered across her frail body. He’ll heal some tomorrow for her to ease the pain. He knows Kylo likes surveying over every tender bite mark and every red scratch. Arouses him to see the marks of the beast. Tooth and claw daggering into nubile skin.

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve waited for you both.” Draegan mumbles so lowly Kylo almost misses it. His touch is on her cheek now. Scooping back a lock of hair that’s stuck to her dewy forehead.

She mumbles something breathily. Her head twists into Draegan. Her hips shove towards Kylo. He continues adoring her with his piercing eyes dimmed to a softness Kylo’s rarely seen. It looks good on him; being hopelessly in love.

“I can’t believe she’s finally here.” He comments. How long he’s waited- for the three of them to fit like this as if lost puzzle pieces. All along to know she was coming. Gave him such hope.

How his and Kylo’s hope is here- and she smells like sex and lost notes of lavender oil, and salty sweat.

His eyes skim over the round of her closed eyelids. The fan of her dark lashes. He can’t fathom how lucky he is to have him and her, the two souls he adores, all here snug with him in bed. It seems like a madness.

Kylo makes a noise that’s almost akin to a purr as he leans over and calmly grabs Draegan’s wrist as he runs his fingers under her chin. He brings his wrist over to his mouth and kisses the spot where a pulse should lay on his pallid arm.

The demon smiles as his nose nuzzles into the warm skin of him. Purring pleased at the scent of his other mate being close by. Comforted by it. Swimming in the bliss it brings him. He wants to bury his nose in the scent coming from his wife’s pillow and the perfume that pours off Draegan’s robe. Let it smother him alive. Pouring into his lungs, his mouth.

He loves it. Every second of this.

“Goodnight my love.” Draegan says softly across to him. Kylo shoves his nose into his wife’s neck and let’s himself nest down into her side. Into skin and musk and calm. Her pulse is his lullaby and it sails him off to his rest with a gentle chuff leaving his lips for Draegan’s ears to hear.

He smiles with it as Iris snuggles deeper into his neck. Grouping for him even in sleep.

Sometime in the night, as the fire died a slow fizzling death. Grey ash swarms over the flames. The room is lost to darkness. And Kylo’s fingertips find and meet Draegan’s, both draped over Iris’s stomach.

~


	36. Intimacies; Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In case it isn’t glaringly obvious. I don’t know how to play chess.
> 
> Part II is coming on swift wings and it’s SMUTTY OK

Their bedchamber fractures to her rousing mind in slow degrees. Her foggy senses slowly dripping back into focus.

She can smell the dead fire that had blazed away to smoky ash in the fire basket. Something sweet metal and copper. Earthy grit of mud. All of it is drying on the sweaty bloodied sheets. And there’s something else-

A maelstrom of cologne. Pine forest and juicy fruit hanging from dark thorny brambles to her left. And then the other side; to her right, there is Jasmine and sage and something beautifully musty, entwined with ancient sunshine. Berries and sour wine.

The savage beating of a radiant heart in a warm demons chest. Warm like flames licking up brimstone. The still silence and loving press of a vampires stony cold arms wound safely around her.

The best of both the men she loves. Laying tucked around her in their bed. Evidence of their wild night together still lingers and stains on the cotton white sheets.

Iris peels open her drowsy eyes and mouldy dark scarlet of the stitched canopy above meets her sleep blurred eyes. There’s a slice of cutting white abutting in from the crack in the heavy curtains. It swipes across the room and stripes up the old walls. She can hear the fussing pine trees outside swaying clashing on a strong wind. A new day coming into fruition.

Her muscles begin to unfold and unfurl. A sticky arm of cold muscle lays sweating and stuck to the soft of her stomach. The bedsheets are draped down to her ribs. Mud and dried smears of rusty red cling to her skin too. Lightly smudged all down her front, her hips, and over her breasts. Places Kylo had clung onto with his claws and smeared his mouth all over.

The first thing she feels is how her body is ringing with aches and pains. Complaining with her movement as she stretched herself awake. Pain ebbs in like the rush of a shore eating away the sand.

A rustle of silk to her right. She shifts against her pillow, groaning a soft whispered sound. She can see a pool of cerulean blue dripping off the bed next to her. Wrapped around pale limbs. Blue silk spills open off a marble pale chest. The chest and the crook of a shoulder she’d been curled into like a burrowing little mouse, all night long; he didn’t mind. Hearing her sleep and dream had soothed him into rest.

She twists her head and glances at the beautiful and brightly awake piercing eyes that meet hers across the crushed linen of the lace edged pillow they’re sharing.

Her stomach squirms and fusses happily that he’s stayed. Waking up to him here is a giddy happiness she didn’t expect.

Another rasp of silk; Draegan lifts one regal arm and his loving hand comes up to cradle her cheek. Sweeping across the plane of her cheekbone so delicately. He was lain on his left side, facing her. Hair like spilled milk pouring freely and white - ice blonde - across the pillow where his head rests. After a moment or two of his caresses, his hand reaches down and rests in the slope of her waist.

“Good morning, little spark.” He hushes softly. His voice no more than his usual melodic purr. It warms her right to the backbone to his voice being the first thing she hears as she wakes. The same with Kylo. When he lumbers awake grumpy as a grizzly bear. She finds it terribly winsome.

She smiles back. His endearment sliding into her blood like molten metal. It makes her blush now. It forever will, hearing him call her that.

_His little spark._

“ You stayed.” She comments gladly. Sleep still heavy in her unawake throat. Voice a husky rasp of its former self.

His smile grows hearing the love in hers. Her spine shivers like ribbon on a breeze listening to his voice and seeing his devotion in that very knee weakening smile.

Her tentative fingers reach across and follow a silken chunk of his hair trapped under his face. The sharp carve of a ruthlessly shaped cheekbone. She strokes along its shape. His hair. Admires the softness of it. It really is like white satin to touch. It glides under her hand so smoothly. Mesmerising. His hand on her hip cups gently and pulls her closer. Their bodies brush. Moulding into the cosy warm spots on the bed they’ve been inhabiting.

“I was intending on taking my leave. But Kylo asked that I stay.” He tells her.

“I’m awfully glad he did.” Iris smiles back at him. What she loves is that he wasn’t smothering them both. He gave them time to be alone as a wedded couple should they need. He’s never too close and never too far. But now she’s had a taste of the three of them in bed together, she’s rather greedy for more of that delicious circumstance.

He doesn’t need to be informed of her gladness. She spent most of the night curled up in his neck. The little mewling noises she made in her sleep only made him hold her closer. He didn’t only know of it - her joy for him being there. He felt it. How keenly she loves- hits him in the chest like flaming arrows. Sears into his glass bones. Cracks the marble of him and slips down deep.

“I must thank you for coming to my aid last night.” She suddenly remarks with a soft blush kissing heat across her cheeks. Recalling the carnality of it all. Of Kylo’s lust. His temper. Claiming her as his mate like the wolves do.

“I need no thanks at all.” He insists softly.

“Besides-I have to be watchful of our lady with such beasts roaming around.” He drawls with a sly smile and a cunning wink.

Iris knows he loves the bloodied side of Kylo almost as much as she does. If not more- he’s the one who bloomed him into creation.

It’s beyond enchanting to watch words spill from his pretty lips. She’s beguiled by every fine one. Had been since she first laid eyes on him. Stood there in Ranlor’s dining room that night like a tall spill of winters-frost. Stood there with his creamy paper skin and beautiful cut glass features. Devastating blue eyes. She could never be the same after seeing them gaze at her so.

And behind him, dragged his shattered heart in tow. Trailing along on the silken train of his coattails.

It seems much healed now. They have gathered up the mirror shards of his love and carefully, piece by piece, put it back together again. Here, she feels such solace and love seeing him in bed with them. It makes her feel most infatuated. Keeping her wrapped warm in his hold; in his love. And they give him love right back in swathes too. He’s not sure he deserves it yet and they offer it in clutches. It spills over their hands for him.

Here, she feels his eyes stroke their warmth and comfort along her as he admired.

There was a time when she believed his eyes to be icy. To believe they masked his demonic malice. A clever and deceptive front. Now she can see there was nothing but a shattered love and longing masked behind the facade of those cornflower blue eyes. They oft looked barren and cold before she knew him well. But they have only ever held warmth for her, as she’s now discovered.

She turns to him. Shutting her eyes in bliss feeling his hand now soothe a curl of hair back behind her ear. She rests gladly on her side facing him. Kylo’s arm still knotted around her middle like a strong root of a tree. Keeping her waist where it was. Where he wished it to be. His skin cold again. Back to normality.

She’s curling up into the bedsheets. Tucking them up between her arms. Covering herself where the covers slid off in her sleep. She blushes a little thinking he would’ve seen her bare state. Her freed breasts and the dark of love bites and the purpled crescents of teeth marks blooming there.

“Can I ask-“ She starts. He shifts his head and maintains eye contact with her. Letting her know to proceed with her enquiry.

_When will she learn she can ask anything of him?_

“He’s made threat many times to-“ She trails away.

“Feed from you.” Draegan finished for her. His eyes glow so soft and ethereal in the sparse light of the bedchamber.

_Oh_ , this seraphic man and his captivating beauty. Was enough to make the strongest iron-willed woman - or man - on earth, stutter and blush into indecisiveness.

She nods. “Yes.”

“Most times he’s so controlled and lucid. But there have been times when it seems his control is merely hanging by a thread.” She tells.

“He’s resisted the call of your blood for longer than he’s resisted anything else in his life.” Draegan explains.

“Blood taking should be sacred. A shared intimacy. He knows this. I simply had to resupply him of the fact that if he fed from you in that state last night, it’s a dangerous gamble as to whether he’d stop before he did you serious harm.”

Iris nods in gentle understanding. Draegan cups her cheek. Palm so big and warm across her skin. “I wouldn’t let you be hurt spark. As I have said; you’re mine to protect too. And protect you I will.” He vows.

_Viciously_.

Iris holds his arm of the hand that’s touching her. “What hurts you, hurts me.”  
He tells her seriously. And it always had. 

He leans close, nuzzles his lips to her brow and gives her a slow indolent kiss. Letting his lips linger. Listening to their press echo around the jasmine and cotton scented air they’re so closely sharing. His lips are dry and silken-hot.

She wholly believes him.

“I think this is a rather dangerous position for us to be in.” She smiles.

His eyes gleam with something delighted and wicked.

“How so-“ He seeks. Leaning up on his elbow, blue silk of it stabbing into the bed.

She can’t help reaching over and running her fingertips over the divine planes of his marble chest.

So warm and firm under her touch. The furrows and dips around his ribs. The plains of his firm rounded pectorals. She eyes over the flat discs of his nipples. His gown had slipped away in the night. Leaving his whole chest on display. She follows the divot at the hollow of his throat. Down and over the hill of his collarbone. Trailing down and down.

“There’s such a danger that I’m so contented to be in this bed here with you both, I might wish to never leave it.” She smiles bashfully.

“I can only imagine the pandemonium that might ensue if we steal you away to ourselves.” He leers. They touch each other gently.

He slips his fingers down her naked shoulder. Runs along the round smooth of her shoulder and then her upper arm. Her whole body shivers with the caress. Enough pleasure flutters in the pit of her stomach to make her eyes want to roll back in her head.

She grins at his words. “Quite. I’m certain anarchy would occur.” She japes. Her fingers now at his sternum. Over the flat marble muscle and the fine white ivory of his skin. He really did look like a cold impressive statue come to life. Only he wasn’t cold. Not in any manner.

She first thought he was like moonlight. Or starlight. Something ethereal and so very far away. Shrouded in tragedy and loneliness. Devastating in its beauty and casting out ice-white light. Some remark it to be cold. But she saw such elegance in its frosted ivory clasp. Phenomenally pretty and she just aches for want of admiring it. How ironic that the earthly counterpart in bed with her warrants exactly the same reaction.

Draegan chuckles. Lust and unequivocal love sliding right on into his blood with the way her tentative little fingers still explore his chest. Finally he’s coaxed her into being bold enough to explore him the way he wishes to with her.

How possessively he wished to know every inch. Swallow her up into his touch. Devour with tongues, lips, teeth and groping searching seeking fingers. He’s swimming drunk in her eager touch. Ravenous to sink his tongue into the satin of her mouth - and other more silken and blazing parts of her. The parts Kylo had so dominated last night.

He wanted her with absolute wild abandon. But patience and determination are two tools he’s more than skilled at wielding. For now he will take things at a glacial pace. Content to savour her smiles and her attentions.

He wanted plenty more of her gossamer light touch. The golden warmth of her smile. Rare as a shooting star. The sweet sirens call of her voice as she sighs and gasps his name sweeter than any orchestral chorus or birdsong. He wants the hellfire of her nails digging in his back. He wants to make her suffer sweetly. Wants her to beg until his name is a dried husk on her lips. And he knows it will come. It will all come in time. He wants to court her first.

He’s got the time to get to know her better. A chance he could ill afford with Kylo.

Speak of the devil-

Kylo’s arm suddenly tightens lazily around his wife’s stomach. Muscles and skin flexing to life behind her.

“When you two have quite finished. Some of us are trying to rest in peace.” Comes a low growl from behind Iris’ shoulder. A shuffling rustle of cotton and Kylo’s wild head of hair appears on the pillow. A grumble or a breath half bred with an indolent growl.

Shifting across as he remains with his eyes closed. Shoving his big nose and sleepy mouth into his wife’s neck. Trails of blood and muck have dried down his arms, and chest. Still stuck coppery dry to his lips and mouth. Smeared all over his cheeks and staining the sheets too.

Iris can feel his half hard cock prodding into the back of her thigh as he gently kisses around the marks he made on her neck. He rumbles in appreciation. Gone were the fangs. Now there’s only his plush and lightly chapped lips nuzzling into her to make her breath quicken and her heart skip beats.

“Good morning, dear husband.” Iris closes her eyes and smiles as he draws them close. His sticky body pressing into her back. Dwarfing her with his huge frame. Tucking his free arm under her pillow and clasping her close. His fingers wander into the territory near Draegan’s hair. Feels the silk of it on the pillow he and Iris are sharing. Touching both of them gave him this searing warmth low in his belly.

Draegan looks at them moulded together. Kylo’s eyes lazily open and he finds the blue eyes of his lover over his wife’s neck and shoulders.

“I thought was being discussed.” Kylo mumbles. His eyes shimmer darkly with warmth. His smile is tucked into Iris’ neck. But it’s still there. Even across the darkened room Draegan can see that glimmer in his eyes sat there plain as day.

“Did we wake you?” Iris asks softly and gently. They hadn’t spoken much above a whisper. But she supposed, he had awfully good ears.

“Matter of fact, something else rather took precedence.” He insisted. Rocking his hips forwards only a little to let Iris feel the hard state of his cock. Precome smearing again along the back of her thigh. Weeping for her again.

She gasps. His lips don’t desist in rubbing so nicely against those thrilling points in her neck.

Draegan chuckles. “Haven’t you had quite enough of our darling spark for now?” He chides.

“Besides. She’ll be sore. What she really requires is a bath and some soothing balm on all those raw marks and scratches you left.” His cutting voice adds to Kylo. Edged with steel to let everyone know he was doubtless in charge, and rightly so.

She usually detests being discussed in the third person. But they somehow make her stomach flutter when they do it in love. With only her best intentions at heart.

“I’m sure you’ll soon come to understand my reluctance to let her leave our bed.” Kylo smiles. Iris feels it skim along her shoulder. She twists her head around and catches on Kylo’s smug expression. He looked as giddy and as randy as a schoolboy in his first flushes of youth.

“I understand that perfectly enough already.” Comes Draegan’s charming answer.

Plucking her hand up from caressing his chest and placing a kiss on the back of it. Laying it gently across her knuckles. She warms right to the backbone at the look in his eyes. She stays nestled into the pillow with Kylo cuddling into her back as Draegan pulls himself away and up. White hair falling perfectly straight and unmussed down his neck.

He stands from the bed. Silk trailing after him as he goes. Making no move to right his gown. It stayed gaping open at his chest. Iris watched him pads across to their washroom door. He twists the gold handle and swings it open. A wall of heat and floral buffets into the dark air. A velvety smell that made her feel drowsy and contented all in one;

Sumptuous red roses, a blend of them. Scattered with a note of overpowering sweet violets, and silky clean soap.

“I asked your maid to have a bath drawn.” He explains with a kindly smile. He’d risen almost with the dawn. Rang down and requested a bath for her Ladyship. He knew she’d need one.

She didn’t seem altogether unsprised to see him there. In a state of almost undress. Matter of fact she seemed remarkably un-shocked that it was him that addressed her at the door, after her timid knock rang through the wood. She concealed a wide smile and told him she’d see to it at once.

He thanked her in her mother tongue. She slid away with red cheeks. After he shuts the door, he turned back over his shoulder and looked back towards the bed. Where his loves both still slept soundly. He crept back to bed silent as a shadow and slid back into Iris’s hold, she clutched onto him like he had never left.

Now, he crosses back to the bed. Padding over the fine rugs and with his silk gown trailing, floating angelically, out behind him. He pauses in his path from the fire and fetches Iris’s gown for her. Comes back to the bed in time for her to try and sit up.

Kylo let’s her out his grip, watches where her knotted twisted hair falls aside around her shoulders. When she bows her head, he sees her skin bared. And all the marks he’d put upon her in his frenzy last night.

Splotches and blooms of dark purple ringed with blue and red, spread all across her neck and shoulders. Bites stabbed down the back of her shoulder blades. Mottling the creamy skin.

A crinkled frown of concern lines Kylo’s brow when she sits up and the sheets peel away. She hisses in pain as she moves. Thighs and hips flaring with red-hot agony. The strain of being so viciously handled seeps through from the night before. He was in such a daze he barely understood what he did to her. He can see it now; plain as day.

He leans on his side and gently touches his fingers to her bowed back as she shuffled to the edge of the bed. Her gossamer cream skin warm to the touch. His hand felt calloused and rough. Just the right kind of rough to the touch. His fingertips rasp along her back. Tracing over the raw indents his claws had made.

He’s stuck mesmerised by the sight and horrified with himself because of it. She’s scarred with marks left by a beast. The odd love bite made him aroused to see it’s dark spread on her pretty neck. This was beyond savage. She’d been half mauled.

She comes to a shaky stand. Draegan won’t let her falter or fall. He’d sooner drive a dagger on through his own heart.

When she stretches up, a ripple of pain kicks at her lower abdomen. She hisses with it. He steadies her and she clings onto his arm as he caught her so ably. One arm slipping skilfully around the back of her waist.. “I’ve got you, spark.” He intones gently.

Draegan looks over to Kylo as Iris struggled on trembling thighs and shaky calves in front of him. He catches on his curious and agonised frown as he lays there lounging in the bedsheets like a bloodied dirtied deity. Twisting in pain to see the evidence of his damages.

“You’re in need of a clean up too.” Draegan says to Kylo where he’s laying out.

“Ladies first.” He insists with a lazy drawn back smile.

Draegan takes her gown and links it around her shoulders. Tucking her arms carefully in and slipping it up her shoulders. Hugging her closer to his body with the fabric. Shielding the modesty she was careful to protect.

He’d never want her to be ashamed of her form. But he can fathom that she’s not one to flaunt her bare state. She was proper that way. It makes his smile quirk up at the corner to see. Him and Kylo would kneel at her feet and worship her like she’s some fertility goddess. And she wraps her robe around herself so snugly.

She looks down and watches as Draegan’s clever fingers carefully knot the sash around her waist. He slips his hand along the back of her neck and scoops her hair out the neckline for her. So careful with her. Her eyes watch him fascinated. He’s so reverent.

Her cloud grey eyes are brimming with the overwhelming love and thoughts of his kindness.

He meets her gaze and it’s enough to flood her cheeks with heat.

When she goes to step forwards, her shivering legs make her realise how her body is still reeling from overuse. Terrible pains rip like piercing arrowheads deep into the nerves of her muscles. Shooting up her legs and ragging on her hips.

She doesn’t know how she manages to stumble to the washroom but she

somehow does. She imagines her gait is alike that of a baby foal discovering how to use her legs for the first time. Wonky wobbly outcrops she’s not yet used too. Draegan walks along, almost in step with her. Ready to help where he can. She feels comforted to have him at her back.

She crosses into the tiled threshold of the washroom. Cold tiles patting under the soles of her feet. In her tired and grubby state she doesn’t think there’s any finer bliss than shedding her gown and sinking into the welcome heat of the clean bath water. Into the cradling lap of the big long bath.

The washroom was beautifully warm from the fire lit in the half by the side of the bath. Copper sheens in drips off the white porcelain. The snap and crack of it makes Iris feel cosy. Sluggish.

She stands and untied the knot at her waist. Arms aching too. Her whole body seems to be stiff and seized up. Drawn in like a sheet of knotted tense crumpled up paper. Draegan cups her head and sweetly kisses her temple, before he walks to the side dresser and fetched a cloth and other items.

She pulls at her shoulders and let the gown shimmy it’s way free. She winces in pain as she pulls her arms behind her to free it. Not at all surprised when long kind fingers take her upper arms from behind and help soothe away the cloth. She can feel his breath at her ear. The sharp of his nose pushing into her hair.

It makes her shiver and burn. When he comes close she just feels the potency of her lust for him beat around her body. Slushing like a molten metal tide. It burns everywhere it touches upon through her blood. Like sun shining through cut glass. It’s fracturing and malformed. Reaching so far.

She gasps a little when the cotton fabric of her covering drops off her elbows and wisps away to pool at her feet. He sighs too. It would be impossible for him to be anything else. Enough to make his eyes almost roll back shut in bliss. How long he’s waited, and now, here she is-

The air was pulled right out her lungs, stolen away, as she stands there naked, looking at the red rose petals swirling in her bath water, with him at her back. So foolish to feel this way when he’d glimpsed her last night. Touched her skin. Kissed her so passionately.

She tenses up to realise she’s suddenly bare. In more ways than one. There’s no secrets any more. Nothing but air. Nothing but love and lust in abundance. For the first time here; she realises how vulnerable she is, stood there in his arms.

He doesn’t even need to use words to tell her how beautiful he thinks she is. She can’t fathom how he does it. Connection between them pulses stronger.

He does it with the way he stands behind her. The way his hands land gentle on her skin. Admiring. Adoring.

Kylo’s watching from his position lounged on the bed. Through the open door. He doesn’t just see lust there between them. He can see love too. Fierce soul-ripping love. It moves him.

Draegan’s hand is so big, fingers spanning so long they can capably wrap around her forearm with no trouble. His touch is feather light as he skims down the inside of her wrist and slowly takes her fingers for his own. Slotting through the gaps of hers. He fits there so well. In a way that feels right. He’s a missing puzzle piece she never knew she’d lost.

He takes her hand and holds it. Braces her arm up and lets her realise he’s there to steady her so she can step in the bath. She does so slowly lifting and placing her foot under the hot water. Draegan is a warm wall of jasmine and silk behind her back.

Her skin burns at the heat but she soon settled and sits under the brim of the water. Whimpering a little at the strain of her sore muscles. She sinks below and tips her head back to properly wet her hair. Steam swirls off the waters surface and off her sheening skin. Rose petals dance in the tides around her body. Draegan smiles down at the sight of her so contented.

“Would you like me to take my leave of you?” He asks. Wondering if he’s overstepping. He knows she likes to bathe alone. Maybe to relax after her night of plenty.

“Absolutely not.” She smiles. He likes the way her wet cheeks fold back into little crinkled dimples. Likes the way she asks him to stay. Always drawing him in. Never sending him away. He likes the rosy-pink of her cheeks so much it makes him smile.

He crouched beside the bath. Hair falling straight down either side of his neck. Cerulean silk spilling open over his chest. His sleeves draped to catch on the lip of the bath as he brought the cloth to hand and dunked it under the water. All his rings still slotted on his fingers. Knotted twisted shapes of sculpted metal cradling the dull stones. Wet sapphires and grey stones shine off his hands.

He brings his hands up, dripping, two fingers touch to her chin, he delicately draped the cloth against the cheek closest to him. Taking away the little smear of dried rust that sat stuck there.

Her skin is blazing to the touch. He feels it as he scoops up a gentle handful of her hair and lifts it off her neck. Sweeping her dripping tresses aside to let his eyes roam over the half bleeding bites and the savage bruises. Ringed ugly things all around such a pretty neck.

He was a careful lover. He only left marks when and where he wishes. Kylo is a contrasting lover. Bruises, bites and scratches, grips of flesh spilling over his big fingers. That was oft his way. He loves viciously. He likes leaving a savage impression on those he loves.

He reaches down to his side for the bottle green glass vial he’d fetched. He tips it up and drags the oil onto his fingers. Something that smells as green and botanical clean as the bottle it dwelled from. It smelled soothing. Carefully, he reaches over and rubs it over the bruises. Smoothing his thumb barely over the skin. This was for the bruises. The cuts he would have to treat differently. Something far greater than any herb he’d use for those.

She winced a little at the sting of his fingers. He was being so careful. “My apologies.” He intoned deeply so that she knows he too can feel her pain.

Her skin shimmers with the feeling of his fingers traveling gently along her neck. It makes her feel weightless. Soaring with sensation and all he’s doing is touching her neck with a mere fingertip. His silk sleeves draping over the bath almost kissing into the water.

“The bites sting worse than the bruises do.” She tells him tenderly. Leaning her head out the way to let him gain easier access as he worked healing her.

“Vampires do tend to have a nasty bite.” He purrs ironically. That cunning glint is back in his eyes.

“How rude.” Kylo calls through to them.

Draegan chuckles a humming sound. “Especially that one.” He adds. Making Iris laugh too. Dabbing his hand around more bruises.

She leans her head back against the chilling cold surround of the bath behind her. She feels naught because this demon beside her is making her feel like heaven itself. She can feel his eyes stroking along her skin just as much as his hands are.

When his thumb cards over a particularly deep crescent cut at her shoulder she goes to cry out in pain-

And it’s no more. Where he touched something warm and bursting spread across her skin. A slow slow frisson of heat. Blooming around the cut. Knitting it back together until that sharpness leaves.

She twists around to see the space he’d touched upon. She slips her fingertips over the spot and the skin is not broken. The redness and dark of the bruise bloomed around the cut is fading. The pain shrivels up and leaves her skin.

She looks back to meet his blue gaze. He smirks and chuckles at her astounded expression.

She knew Draegan was a powerful being. Dark magic woven into his touch. More beyond her comprehension than she can ever lay any claim too. But she had no grasp of just how much power he harnesses. The domineering angel of death. Such power to destroy lay so obviously in his hands. She forgets that life balances out death just as much. His propensity towards the sacrality of life was a beautiful thing.

He leans over and his silvery hair swings down near her face as he lays a kiss to her wet brow. Tasting the soap and roses on her skin as he sat faithfully beside her. He nuzzled against her for a moment as he whispered sacred intimate words into her skin.

He closes his eyes and inhaled her. Wet skin and warm and she’s so brimming with life and curiosity. Sparking with it like a shimmering flickering fire consuming a bone dry woodland. Embers burning bright in the crux of its life.

So sweet and inquisitive he almost can taste her thirst for it. For him. More knowledge. For knowing more of him. She wants to grab at every facet he unveils; this mysterious beautiful creature. As if she could pull open his skin and see at every dark detail that formed him.

She wants all; that’s just her way.

He smiles warmly. “I’m flattered you think me beautiful” He kisses into her wet cooling hair. She wants to be bashful that he’s caught her out in that.

“To answer your question in part, Demons like me are capable of a lot more than you can imagine, spark.” He tells her with a hint of pride and secrecy in his voice. Iris feels her blush flush right down to her neck.

He seals his words with another kiss. It lay inviting on her brow. A promise. A guarantee of her knowing more.

  
  


~

Ranlor doesn’t ascend into anarchy after all. Kylo and Draegan relinquish their hold on her. After her very soothing bath, she slips away to Rose to be dressed in the Duchess suite.

Her maids canny smile doesn’t falter for even a second. Her mood rather intrigued by the man who met her at their bedroom door hours previous. Iris doesn’t dismiss nor confirm amy such rumours. She merely beams as Rose helps dress her hair. Takes a surplus of time with an elaborate style today.

Iris loves Rose, but her plot is as wholly transparent as a sheet of glass.

Her cunning ladies maid dresses her today in a smoky lavender-grey satin dress with fluffy scallop lace trims sitting jagged on the 3/4 sleeves, and the scoop of the neckline. The one Iris suddenly recalls she told Rose that Lord Verros had complimented her for looking  so lovely in, the other week. And she brings out droplets of fine diamond earrings and a necklace bursting with fat fine gems.

She wears the earrings. But the necklace she declines. She didn’t want to feel like an over-trussed ornament. She thinks an elaborate coiffure is decoration enough.

She stands from the vanity table and chair, and Rose is still beaming that big grin. Iris bids her a good day in French as she slips out the room.

She heads downstairs for her study. Somewhat with a reduced gait, Draegan may have healed her cuts, but an ache still lingers in her hips and thighs. Little ebbing reminders of what had passed. It makes her harbour a grin on her lips all morning.

Even as she sits at her desk and takes care of her pesky letters, attending to her writing with a cup of sweet Earl grey tea swirling steam away in front of her. All the time her heart feels feather-light. Her mind is scattered to lovely pieces. Like leaves - or little arrows of white feathers - tumbling away on a blustery wind. She’s quite taken with it.

She catches herself pausing in her duties, mind flickering back to her evening as if a candle shaking and snapping at the mercy of a powerful draft. When she recalls how she woke up in their arms. Their chests. Naked skin and rumpled bedsheets. Their cologne’s both sticking to the cotton. Jasmine and brambles. Kylo’s nose in her neck and Draegan’s hands curled around her waist. She’s in a daze

So much so when Jomar comes in to deliver her some more post off the silver tray he held so capably aloft, she doesn’t even hear him enter. Doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to anything of consequence. She’s at her desk and she’s miles away. Sat back with her chair slanted to the window. The sun stroking over her hair and her face. Spinning gold stroking into her muddy locks. A rare slope of spring sunshine flowing onto her cheeks.

Her eyes on the mountains in the distance. Her mind completely swallowed up whole in being somewhere else.

Jomar stands and tries to catch her eyeline. But it’s useless. For she is quite taken.

She nearly jumps clean out her skin when he softly slides some letters onto her desk. Virtually in front of her. He says naught but raises one brow at her.

“Are you quite well, Mi’lady?” He asks with concern. His bushy salt white and pepper black eyebrows, finely groomed, almost raise up and meet to the gold silk of his dastar covering his hairline.

Iris laughs. Chiding her foolishness. Calming herself and pressing a hand to her chest. “Sorry Jomar. I was- absorbed elsewhere.” She reaches across the desk and accepts the post he hands across with a demure thank you. Blushing with being caught so openly stuck thinking about such desiring things.

“I know full moon nights can be- somewhat strenuous.” He infers with a hint of knowledge in his tone. He known Kylo all his life, his family knew him for generations back, they all must’ve known what full moon nights can tend to drag out of him. Increased appetites. And the shortest fuse of patience imaginable.

“Between you and me, he’s a lousy temper when those nights hit. Worse than usual.” He japes with a smile.

“I’m aware of that -now. He was very careful not to overwhelm me when we first wed of what the full extent of his nature entails.”

“I’m sure Lord Verros can provide some illuminating advice on this subject.” He winks with an all knowing gleam in his eye.

“He has indeed been a very informative companion.” Iris agrees. Jomar’s smile could almost be called cunning.

“And I know you’ve been doubtless been gossiping with my maid after this morning.” Iris infers with a sly smile of her own. Ripping the innocent facade off his clever plot.

He gasped. Faking aspersion and clasping a hand over his lapel. “Why, I’d sooner die.” He comments making Iris chuckle at his ostentatious diva-like performance.

His eyes warm as he leans over the desk and places his hand gently on her own. “A Butler, a  good Butler as I thoroughly believe myself to be, takes his families secrets to the grave Mi’lady.” He assures her. The warmth flooding from his russet-cinnamon eyes and the tender note of his voice makes Iris’s heart soften.

Iris laces her fingers through his.

“Does everyone in the castle know by now?” She asks with a shaky breath. Worried people will look at her or treat her differently. She knows it’s a stupid hurtful reaction to reflect upon. But she is only human. One thing she’d hate is for the wolves of society to seize on the gossip of their ‘unusual’ marriage and use it against her.

She braces herself for pain. For humiliation. As she has done her whole life. She expects the worse and flinches in preparation for it to come. Old habits are the hardest to kill.

“It is not. Not if I have my stern way about it. Strictest confidence. And you should have seen the ferocity of the glare Rose gave off to someone who tried to dig the secret out of her. She didn’t budge an inch. She’s a great mind to be scary, that girl, when she wishes to be.” He tells proudly.

Iris bites inside her lower lip and sighs a smile so wide in hearing that. She could see it; the stone cold expression of Roses face. The brown steel of her eyes that could cut like jagged bronze metal. The straight line of her pretty lips and the displeasure that seeps out every pore. How fiercely she loves and will defend her lady. Loyalty was such a heartening emotion.

“If I may take a liberty to say-“ Jomar begins.

Iris tilts her head at him. She interrupts him with good reason. “We’re leagues beyond any such fear of your taking liberties, Jomar. Seeings as I’d quite trust you with my life.” She tells.

He feels heat creep into his cheeks with that. He withdraws his hand from clasping hers. But their warmth and constancy of their firm friendship remains surrounding them still.

“I have only seen them apart. Seething in fury and languishing in pain. But I have heard tale of them when they were in love. And they are happy near each other for the first time in centuries. I think you helped accomplish that. You have more wonderful power over this situation than you think.” He predicts with a clever smile. More than she perhaps gives herself credit for.

“And they are loyal to the very bone. They look at you like you hold up the stars. The both of them. Cast aside fears of what anyone else may think. What feels right, can only ever be right. People will always censure what they don’t have the benefit of eyes to understand.” He shrugs honestly.

“When I see the three of you together, there’s something more there. Something palpable. Untouchable. Take that as your new normal Mi’lady.” He offers.

“That is far stronger than any consequence of nattering gossip.” He proclaims to the sacred silence as he makes for the door. Iris wants to grasp him and hug him tight with crushing meeting of arms. Which would no doubt wrinkle his smooth spotless sherwani coat. She wants to thank him for soothing some of her immediate fears.

She should let the knowledge of this new love win over any such stupid worries she had about what people would think. “Jomar-“ She starts.

He kindly holds up a hand which halts her. His gold ring glimmers on his palm. “If you pardon. We’re leagues beyond that, Mi’lady.”

“Now, would you care for some cake?” He asks as he halts at the door-case. Mind panging with an afterthought. He’d forgotten McTavish just took a rather tempting looking loaf tin out the oven. A sponge cake of blackberry and apple. Brimming with deliciously dark bramble berry jam.

“No.  Thankyou .” She smiles simply. Their eyes brim with the intimacy of the connection and words they’ve just shared.

“I’m going to go and read awhile in the east wing parlour. Maybe some tea in a little while? Who knows, I may come across a very eager student to help teach.” She grins. Grabbing her skirts in a fist as she stands. A book held in her other hand. She rounds her desk as Jomar grins. Rolling his eyes.

“I left him to his geography lesson earlier. I’ve no doubt he snuck away to do, well, anything else.” He tells with the tone of an exasperated single father. Before ducking around the doorway and walking off down the hallway to the kitchens. She heads out and strides away in the opposite direction. Her mood lifted by their jovial encounter.

Ranlor looks extremely well today. When she first arrived it was deep in the clutches of a frosty winter. It’s all shifting now. Now the sun shines across the oncoming spring landscape. The forest starts to bloom with colour from the bulbs nested under the earth. Ready to push and up and out. Perfuming the forest with nectar. Thirsty for the suns kiss.

Iris likes the way sun gleams on the old stone walls. Bumped along and mingling with shadow. It makes the pointed tiles of the floor gleam a brilliant white. That yellow light is eaten up into her steps as she walks along. Feeling the light warm her back through her silk dress. It did feel like a welcome hug of weather after the cold sneaking frost and mountains of heavy snow the winter brought. She loved the winter dearly. But summer is such a blessed time of year. Everything feels so much lighter. Brimming with gold warmth.

She comes to the parlour she seeks. The one she borrowed the book in her hand from. She pushes open the thick wedge of the door and hums carefree to herself as she walks along the wall of the bookshelf searching for the vacant spot where the book would be returned to its snug home. Leather and old paper musty in her nose as she sidles along the shelves.

She doesn’t know why this parlour had become her favourite. But it had just started with innocently borrowing books, and curling up in the armchair by the fire. She throughly believes the view out the window is to blame.

An exquisite glimpse of the forest. Trees bashing and swaying on the wind. The mountains kissing the sky and the distant blue curl of the river cutting through the landscape. Such a tranquil prospect. She’s lost times of the hours she’s spent reading her books and gazing out the window. It may have been just another parlour, but she’s been happy here. At peace. That’s what she feels.

That coming from someone who could hardly ever grasp the concept of peace or tranquility. It’s a thing she’s sure to cherish.

It’s a pretty room too. A grand golden harp stands unused, tucked in one corner. The walls are a gold butter lustre with baroque hay gold ornamental trims boxing in and gilding the walls. The rug that squashes woollen and thick under her feet is a teal blue with sprouting red roses at the centre. There’s an empire silhouette light draping n glass beads hanging and spitting gold light drips out over the ceiling when it’s lit.

The fire blazes merrily in the white marble and sooted black coal grate. The settees and chairs are all French style. Petal white printed cotton stripes down the cushion of the seats. Patterned in precise vertical strips with roses and leaves. The settee is inundated with peach silk bolster cushions and the drapes that brush the floor at the window are of the same peach silk. At one time, Iris would have thought it gaudy. But somehow, here, it seems beautiful.

She did wonder who picked out the curtains in such a feminine shade. She likes to think it would be Mrs Jones. But she’s far more amused by the fact it might’ve been Kylo or Jomar travelling to do his Lord’s bidding. Bringing back the silks from somewhere expensive and exotic. Some sun kissed isle full of palm trees, and severe sun, where bartering and trading spices and silks was a way of life. Where spiced rum flowed rampant and old sailors tales and suspicions were taken as seriously as law.

Iris likes reflecting on these meagre thoughts and things sometimes. This castle so stuffed with riches and history. She likes speculating over it. What her imagination dares her to dream.

This room boasts proudly of big terrace windows, leading out to another small stone balcony, like so many around Ranlor’s windows. Little outcrops carved with stone. Set inside this particular window is a chess table flanked by two creamy rose King Louis chairs.

She stands on tiptoes, peering up against the shelves with her fingers hooked there to see what the bookcase can offer her.

She’s got her back to the rest of this parlour. So she doesn’t see that it’s presently occupied beyond just herself. She’s none the wiser. Facing the bookshelf and turned away from him. Scanning the titles.

He’s sat in one of the rosy chairs by the sun drenched window. Hair sheening pale white cascades of satin softness in the sun. Soft as his piercing eyes and how they melted to her like the sea his home was surrounded with.

He smiles as he carefully sets out the pieces for a chess game before him. Waiting to see if she noticed how she wasn’t alone.

He smiles as she cries out. Pleased with finding the spot on the shelf where her Maria Edgeworth book belonged. She would have thoroughly enjoyed it, he wagered. It was a humorous and satirical essay on the exploration of, what was in her opinion, a gentlewoman’s duty to challenge the force and power of men with wit and intelligence.

He was right; she hadn’t been able to put it down. She devoured it from cover to cover. She was eager to read some more of the authoresses works.

The soft clack of him moving one of the marble chess pieces onto a cold square of onyx is what alerts her. She spins around, mouth gaping open to see him there. Smiling in that way of this that gets her stomach squirming and her cheeks heating. Her whole spine quivers with the awareness of him.

“Draegan.” She beams. Reeling from the shock of his surprising her. Giddy crushing love now fills the space where her shock flooded away. She feels the tingle of new lusting attraction in the pit of her belly. Shooting out to the tips of her fingers too. She’s hyper aware of him.

She leans back against the solid wall of edification the bookshelf offers her. Watching as he moved that white marble chess piece to set it into its square. Where his slender fingers moves into the slant of the sunshine pouring in, the huge sapphire ring on his finger winked in the prosperity of the light’s offer. Snatching sun at her eyes.

He looks as ever he does. Too enchanting for words. That satin silver brocade and the dark breeches and boots on his legs. One long leg crossed over the other as he sits there lounging. Looking suaver than ever she thought possible. His eyes warm her like hot blue coals.

“Spark.” He greets. How she quivers to hear it.

Limitlessly seductive. His voice, smooth as glass. Twice as sharp. Softened and buffed and scratched up hazy with his love for her. Ethereal in the sunshine.

He smiles too charmingly as he moves the Rook to its designated spot.

“I’d no idea this room was occupied. I apologise.” She speaks.

He smiles. Waving away her apology. Batting it away with carefree ease.

“Good book?” He seeks. Raising one dark brow at her. Nodding to the shelf she’d rehomed it upon.

“Miss Edgeworth pens with a great deal of satiric dark wit.” Iris surmises. “I couldn’t put it down.” She adds in a chuckle.

He likes how her taste in literature runs towards such things; he smiles wider as he nudged the white carved queen further on her pearled marble square.

“Have you an opponent?” Comes her curious enquiry. Nodding to the board. Arms crossed behind her back.

“Our dear little sprig asked me to set up the chess board and instruct him in the game-“ Draegan begins. Iris chuckles fondly at the nickname assigned to Ravi.

“He then promptly ran off to do I know not what, when his father came asking if he’d done his geography lesson this morning.” Draegan tells. Iris nods in understanding.

“Guilt doth speak.” Iris surmises. She wanders a little closer. The sun crawls up her skirts as she draws near. Spinning the lilac-smoky threads into a violent shade of purple. She’s magnetised to meet his gaze.

“Would you have me as an opponent?” She offers.

He sets a dark Bishop to its place. Smirks kindly. “In a heartbeat.”

She sinks herself into the seat opposite and curls her hands around the ends of the arms of the chair and slides it into a better position to face him. She’s white marble. His side is onyx.

“I’m glad your sharp mind wasn’t wasted on all things pertaining to marriage and it’s numerous virtues.” He says with great feeling in his tone. Knowing what her hideous hellion of a mother put upon her.

“Most girls are instructed to mould wax roses and string seashells and embroider kerchiefs and bible passages finely. Training them to be an ornamental vision of loveliness.” Iris wheedles with a great degree of faked enthusiasm.

“I found benefit in far more useful employment.” She says.

She checked the ledgers for the farm to practice her mathematics. Stole away every scientific book of her fathers she could lay her young hands on. She gathered up every scrap of information cook gave her about every recipe she knew of. She helped their middle aged housekeeper with the taxes and accounts. Simpson could make the best apple pie in creation, and dust the house top to bottom in ten minutes like an absolute fiend. But bless her, the woman wasn’t quite so skilled with mathematics. Iris helped with it where appropriate. She felt these were far more useful gains for a wife to have.

What use is gathering a string of seashells if she can’t put and keep order to a houses spending ledger in a timely manner? She knew which of the two skills she’d rather possess.

“You always were clever.” Draegan flatters her seriously. With love in his domineering shaded blue eyes.

She finds that she blushes at his praise. Heat prickled at her cheeks. His words always make her feel like her heart was spinning and churning into an aria? Slipping past a high C- thrumming with love.

“There is more to you than meets the eye, Lady Ren. And the eyes do not go wanting either-“ He promises with plenty of flirting to his meaning. This unshakable, poised man was seducing her with words and he still looked seraphic and collected.

“How brazen. I’m quite shocked Lord Verros.” She pretends.

“Not shocked enough to spare me a blush.” He counters. He saw it. He felt it. Felt the way her pulse beat and thumped out notes of her perfume. The plain spicy salt of soap and roses he bathed her in that very morning.

The knowledge of his hands having roamed and stroked her skin just hours ago made him shift a tiny amount in his seat. It aroused him.

The bassy dip in his voice made her thighs shiver. Between them, she clenched. Chest heaved.

“Is this a clever ploy to distract me from our game-“ She seeks.

“You are playing a demon-“ He purrs. His eyes twinkle in the sun. Glimmering mode than bright stars socketed into a swirling black night sky. His blue eyes seem such a paradise to admire. She loses herself there. The Eden he held in his eyes.

Before he harboured a want to tip this very antique chess table aside and capture her in his arms for a kiss- he sates himself a curiosity.

“Who taught you this game?” He asks. Nodding to the board.

“My father was the one taught me chess. He’d instructed me in the game and all it’s numerous strategies since I was ten years old.” Iris says as she eyes up the board. Considers her opening move in her head.

“A most sensible man.” Draegan concludes.

“He is.” Iris agrees. He can hear pangs of sadness in her voice when she spoke in memory of him. He knew how much Earnest Ashton loved his daughter. Even if it was never spoken in audible words.

His quiet actions and silent fondness for her had always spoken louder than his inaction. Love was not always able to be brought into fruition. It was instead kept tidied away and hidden out of knowledge and reach. Some instances love could not heal all. It could not conquer where it ought. With great love often took the toll of a great deal of bravery.

In her case, it came too late to save her from what ailed her. Kylo had that honour. Plucking her from the miseries of her home. Installing her here. He’d always been courageous in love. The both of them sat here knew that.

“He raised a daughter who valued substance over fodder. I’ve found that to be a rarity in the society of your time.” He observes. Today people seemed inclined to favour the latter.

“You won’t hear me arguing with that.” She promises. “You should have met my sisters-“ She says with something in her voice that warned him he’d be horrified by the density of the insides of her sisters heads. Men. Dresses and flirting. And never anything of much consequence beyond that.

Oh , they’d have been positively rabid with attraction for a man as beautiful as Draegan. She well understood the appeal.

“They are not blessed with your rare qualities, spark. But I don’t doubt they are entertaining and loyal and that they must miss you.” He supposes. Reaching for another chess piece.

“I miss them in their unique ways, some of the time. Only some mind. Though their letters do make me smile.” She admits with a note of humour. This makes him smile. A sad thought occurs to her- he was never made to be surrounded by those he loved. He was designed to be a solitary creature. To cause pain. To maim. He would never know the comfort of being surrounded by those who were familiar in relation.

“They try your patience.” He suggests.

“They’d try your patience and you’ve a saintly amount.” She insists.

His chuckle is dark. “On the contrary, I’m rather amused you think something about me is saintly.”

The sapphire ring on his finger sparkles with light-drops from the sun once again. Spring floods him and it becomes him so well. Silver brocade tunic and icy hair. Those fine threads stitched and woven into the fabric- it was as if it was made only for him.

Piercing eyes find her over the squares of their checkered board. “Rules of play- white moves first.” Draegan drawls.

“Here I thought you’d be a perfect savage to go up against.” She barters back. Her tone lingers on flirtatious.

Her fingers linger over her kings pawn. She moves it forwards a square. It makes Draegan smile wider.

“The only thing savage about me at present is how much I want to kiss you.” He promises. Sinking his eyes into her fiercely loving gaze. His words make her fingers flounder over the chess piece she was deliberating over.

He made her heart flutter in her chest. She wants to admonish him but he’s making her brain too simple to function with thought because of that smile of his.

He makes his move directly opposite the pawn she’d chosen. She doesn’t take long to move her Knight to the pearl square one over. Guarding her pawn. He counters her once more. Guards his bishop with a knight.

She glanced at him as she deliberates her next attack. His face is unreadable. Handsome as hell still - completely mysterious. She could know him for another hundred years more and he’s still be a creature full and formed of his secrets. She likes the think she’s only just started to scratch his impassive surface.

He offers everything up gladly.

“Your strategy is most elusive.” She awards him. Narrowing her eyes and moving her piece.

“I’d have been a very poor army commander without such faculties.” He promises. He eyes the board. Makes his attack. Rings wink in the sunlight as he steals a figure off her. He leans back in his chair. Lounges. His elbow on the armrest. Fingers resting over his smiling lips.

She chews the inside of her lower lip. Gazing at her row of marble figures.

“I rather wonder who your last chess opponent was? I’m willing to bet it was someone ruthless and great, knowing the life you’ve led.” Iris supposed idly as she moved her next piece. Setting it on its square with a pleased clack. Taking one of his prisoner.

“Always so curious spark.” He smiles. He hopes she never stops being so.

“As I recall, my last chess game was quite some years past. My opponent was a truly cunning one.”

“You’ve piqued my interest-“ Iris says. Begging to be told.

“I last played this game. At Whitehall Palace. In 1562.” He awards. Letting her piece together the rest with a smirk.

“Don’t tell me your last opponent was the Virgin Queen herself-“ Iris feels her eyes want to blow wide with shock.

His tugging smirk is captivating.

“You’re far prettier to sit opposite. Trust me. Nicer teeth. And she was always distracted with courtiers and servants scurrying up to her side and signing numerous treaties.” He says so simply. Waves it off as a meagre thing.

Iris is astounded.

“How was her technique-“ She wonders. Fascinated.

“She wasn’t a woman opposed to my more delicate array of compliments.” He answers.

“Verros. You brazen flirt.” Iris admonished. Draegan’s chuckle splits is lips. He laughs.

“She was sad to see me leave her court. I had helped her with her military strategy with plotting against the Spanish Armada. She was most grateful for my knowledge. She was a very astute woman. Queen in a time of men’s dominance. It was remarkable to witness her in her ruthless and bloody glory.”

“I suppose her favour for you kept your head upon your shoulders from what I understand.” Iris fretted.

“She ruled with favour and firmness. Even with her courtiers and nobles. She could be as abrasive as a rattlesnake. Didn’t stand for those who didn’t charm her, or dance constant attendance and attention on her. But she treated her favourites well if they remained on her less venomous side. Fond nicknames. Private jokes. Lavish gifts. A seat at her court. £15,000 a year.” He informs.

“I find it hard that anyone could not think you charming.” Iris tells him.

“I was single, and engaged her well in friendly company and military strategy.” He tells with a grin. “An impossible favourite.”

“I bet you were the envy of the court.” She wagers. He shakes his head.

“I far prefer it being  _you_ the other side of the chess board my dear little spark.” He says warmly as she makes her next move.

“I promise not to lock you in the dungeons if you best me.” Iris smiles in good humour.

“Now, I never thought you’d be threatening to clasp me in chains.” He drawls looking at the board. When he looks back up at her-her spine feels about as effectual as a silk ribbon.

She suddenly thought about gigantic chunky black iron chains wrapped around those slender fine wrists.

Iris’ cheeks burn at the implied sexual nature of his words. She hides her smile behind her hand as she rests her elbow on her armrest

“I love to know the thoughts behind those sudden and delightfully pink cheeks.” He flirts lowly. His eyes are so clear and bright. Sunshine on a blue spring. But oh how they  burn \- burn lovely scorching holes in her skin.

“As if you don’t already know-“ Iris says breathlessly. She’s well versed on the fact this demon knows how to peek inside her head. Can read her body language like those books his eyes so ably pours over.  Devours -

She thinks of a time when Kylo threatened to fetch four cravats and keep her arms and legs tied to the mahogany posters of their bed. She didn’t find the idea completely objectionable. It had its merits. This man opposite made her squirm with the sensation of it.

Maybe she’s just a wicked gluttonous woman.

_Oh how he hoped so-_

“We have not settled what the winner of our game shall receive.” She points out. Keeping her mind from wandering into obscene territory.

A thoughtful hum leaves his closed lips as she places his side of the board into a brooding predicament. He has to take a few seconds to think. Two ring clad fingers ghosting over his lips in his thought. Iris watched him drag the cold smooth metal over his soft lips. The hematite ring and the huge chunk of sapphire warmed and bursting with yellow sunlight.

“I could barter for that kiss I mentioned if victory is to be mine.” He says in an afterthought. A slow smile creeps onto his lips. Makes him look like a hungry white tiger eyeing his juicy quivering prey. He plans his every move. Stalks slowly. Waits to strike.

All in all, he makes a very patient hunter.

“And what if I were to win?” She narrows her eyes and grins. Chin tilted to the side. Eyes scrutinising him.

“If you win spark, I’d give you any single thing you could ask of me.” He flatters.

“Within reason?” She adds.

“Without sanity. Without question.” He promises further.

“Now you mention it-“ She moves her next piece. “A kiss does sound awfully tempting.” She slips her piece down onto its square. Hemming in his pieces. The board turning in her favour.

She looks up and catches his still beguiling smile. She wets her lips and he wants nothing more than to sink in to the lush satin of her hot mouth. Cup her face and stumble their eager mouths together. Clash and collide in this lust and attraction. End this flirting and fulfill what he truly desires. He was a clever devil after all.

But she was the one who had him cornered. He looks to the board and she’s quite the clever strategist. She’s bested him. He let her do so.

“I’m pleased to know my wish finds symmetry in yours.” He smirks.

He grabs his King and sets it laying diagonally down on its square. Clever fingers execute the king. The game is lost.

“I am vanquished. My kingdom is yours.” He says with mirthful finality.

Relaxing back into his chair. A resting cricket with his long longs legs folded out comfortably. One bent. One knee stretched out under the table. His lap looked most inviting.

“Did we agree on a kiss?” Iris asks. “As fair settlement.”

“Is so, then your prize is right here, waiting to be claimed.” He lusts.

“Had I better take use of it before the offer expires?” She wonders teasingly.

Iris watches him stand. So vertiginous he towers; over her and the room. He rounds the board and comes to stand before her. Offering out a palm to help her stand. She takes it. Slips hers gently into his big one. His hand takes her so delicately. Wraps around in comfort.

There may be lust here- so much it’s making them both salivate in yearning for this kiss. But love underpins every action. Every word. Every touch is more sacred than any holy relic of man’s knowledge. They are writ into each other. They feel it when they come close.

When she stands they are close. So close. She can hear her dress shifting against the heavy satin of his tunic where it rustled against her lighter frailer silk.

“You know I admire this colour on you. Don’t you-“ He smiles. Her clever canny maid had a helping hand in this. Dressing her up in one of his favourites. The look in his eyes made her glad she’d gone along with Rose’s sly scheme. It makes it worth it ten thousand times over.

Iris looks at him as she presses her hand to the solid satin of his hard ribs. Musculature and warm silver silk under her hands. His Jasmine cologne wraps her up the nearer she comes. Woven into the brocade silk. Berries. Sea air and sage.

His hand comes to her face and his kind thumb slides along the hill of her jawbone.

“I admire much about you little spark.” He smirks.

“We’re mutuals in that vein of thinking.” She promises him. And then a thought occurs

“You let me win didn’t you?” She suspects as he leans in and softly brushed his wonderful lips against her own. She splays her hands to his front. He cups her head, under her neck and over her ear his hand branches out wide.

“That would be telling.” He whispers lush against her mouth. Breath hot and spiced with cherries and that pomegranate tea he drinks. Red and sugared. Divine.  Delicious .

He sinks down and gives her a brief moment of a proper indulgent kiss. One that shuddered through every nerve she had. Her blood zipped and sparked with it. He hooks the back of her waist and hauled them closer together. Lilac crashing weakly into silver. His clever hand settled in the dip of the back of her waist. Span of his hand so big it covers her back from side to side.

She loves two great colossal towers of men and she likes how she feels dainty and delicate in their arms.

She’d never felt dainty or delicate in her life. Or deserving of the love they give to her in reams and reams.

He tips her chin to his. Angles her face up and kisses her deeper. So deep her breasts push into his chest. Her back arches and her arms slip to hold him at his trim waist.

When she pulls back he lets her. Hands still at her neck. They look at each other like the lovesick fools they are- breathing onto each other’s lips. He pulls her near for more. Love drunk lips find hers.

Stomping treads clattering to the door-case break the loving sweet moment.

When she looks around Draegan, her heart slams up in her throat. Chokes her. Crushes all the air out her mouth. But not because of who it is. She doesn’t feel ashamed of kissing Draegan- loving him is her bravery. But rather she’s more moved by the  state of her husband.

Kylo stands there battered and bruised and bleeding.

His cravat is missing. The shoulder of his great coat is torn open. Revealing a thin white fissure of his shirt underneath. He’s got mud smeared on his chest. Up his hands and his arms too. He’s holding a dirty woven brown rag to his forehead and blood is sheeting down one side of his face from a cut to his temple. Dribbling scarlet off his chin onto his shirt. Blooming down him like red rose petals. He’s caked in dirt and spattered blood. Not an uncommon in occurrence. But still to her, a startling one.

His free bloodied hand smears against the ivory door case. He leans into the room and though injured. His mood is a jocular one.

Dragean spins to him as he speaks up. Seeing Iris’ sudden change in demeanour. His hair flies out like white silk as he turns. His Cupid bow lips part on sighting him.

“As much as I hate to interrupt on your loving moment, I am bleeding somewhat rather heavily from the head.” Kylo enunciated with a jovial tone.

~


	37. Intimacies; Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Also. HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS YOU’RE ABOUT TO GET POUNDED-
> 
> Hope you darlings find this utterly ✨spicy✨ This demon and this vampire are idiots but they’re OUR IDIOTS ok-

  
  


“ _Kylo_ -“ Iris gasps and zips around Draegan to come straight to tend to her injured husband. She peels the cloth in his fingers away and peeks at the wound sitting there. The oozy garnet fissure sticky on his brow.

“What on earth happened?” She seeks. He only went out to see some new horses they were taking stock of.

“Unbroken stud decided to descend into histrionics and throw me, head first, into the nearest tree.” Kylo tells. Ow-Ing quietly and cursing in norse when Iris tried to feel if he’d broken his thick skull. Or dented it at the very least.

Draegan walks up slowly behind Iris. Coming to get a better look of his lovers wounds.

“He’s a thick skull spark. I promise you it won’t have done any damage.” Draegan teases with a steady smile.

Kylo pouts in sadness.

“How dare you. I feel rather faint you know” Kylo starts to suppose. Leaning heavily into his wife and the door where she stands. Like a leaning sturdy pine tree creaking over in the forest. Crushing her into the door with a salacious look in his eyes.

“Bedchamber now. We need to clean your wound.” Iris insists.

“Yes nurse.” Kylo drawls down at her. She gives him a terse frown.

“I’ll fetch my medicinal things.” Draegan soothes her laying a kind touch on the back of her hip.

“Thank you.” Iris calls nicely to him as he slips past and heads down the hall. Silver brocade swaying around his hips. Hair shifting down his back. Swinging side to side with the calm willowy stride of his walk. Jasmine croons by them both as he leaves.

“I actually hurt my ankle too. Twisted it as I came off. Would you help me walk darling dearest dove.” He paws her silk clad stomach and tries to pull her close.

She is not amused.

“If you get blood on my dress there’ll be hell to pay.” She promised. Cause Rose would hunt him down and strangle him with her apron strings if she ruined one of the finest gowns Iris owned.

Draegan twists back to look at the pair of them huddled in the doorway where he’s walking down the sun drenched hall. “Stop it. You’re scaring her.” He calls crossly.

“Spark. Get him upstairs. I’ll make haste.” He smiles at her. He disappears around the hallway corner in a swish of silver silk and the light precise clips of his boot treads.

She managed to duck under Kylo’s arm and not take any further nonsense as she helped him limp to their bed. When they get there she sits him down on the end and drags his boots and his coat off him. Draping it over the bath to send it down to be brushed and washed to rid it of mud. In fact, it might be a goner. They’d clean it up and send it to the donations for the less fortunate.

His boots sully the half with sticky mud and drips of blood where she places them.

She pads back across to the bed with a rose patterned basin and jug of lukewarm water from their wash room. She stands it on her bedside and dunks a clean cloth into the water. She leaves it to drip over the rim of the bowl and moves to help rid him off his cotton shirt.

It sticks to him. Heavy and metallic with sticky blood. She throws it in the bath too. Lest he make a mess - like he did last night.

He sits at the foot of the bed on her side. In only his breeches with every big muscle of his chest on crude display. His braces slipped down over his hips like black loops. She fetches her cool damp cloth and tries her best to mop away the spilled blood.

Her skirts draped over his left knee. A spill of pretty purple fabric. He can hear her petticoats rustle and rumple when she moves. He’s itching to just skim his hand up along the curve of her thigh and over her soft little arse.

So incredibly tempted. But if he gets muck on her pretty dress, he’s damn certain her maid would have his guts for garters.

He winced when she pressed carefully over the wound to his brow. “I think you may have splinters of wood in the wound.” She sighs.

“Take my pulse quick. I fear I’m fading.” He japes. Flailing his arm out to her. Wrist turned up. Iris scoffs.

“You’re a calamity you big senseless Viking.” Draegan announces at the doorway as he comes strolling in with a large leather pouch tucked with vials and plants under his arm. He comes to Iris’s side at the bed and with a flick of his hand, he rolls out the leather bag. She can see pouches and pockets stuffed with medicines, tools and exotic oils. Remedies of his own design.

His words to Kylo makes her smile. He takes no nonsense.

“You are in fact quite dead.” Iris reminds him, pushing his arm away as she tries to squint at the nasty cut to see where the nasty foreign shards of splintered wood are sat.

Iris turns to the tall pale demon as he divests himself of each of his fine jewelled rings, and suds up his hands with something from the pouch he’d brought. It smelt bright green and botanical. Witch-hazel. Doubtlessly medicinal. Its scent was like peppermint or nettles. Stinging sharp. He dried his hands on a cloth and steps across to the bed and the moody patient. Shifting his silver sleeves further up his wrists.

“What ever happened to loving sympathy?” He grunts as Draegan tips his head to the side to better look at the wound.

“Its not bad. But I think he’s got some splinters stuck in the cut.” Iris tells him. Her tentative fingertips touching to the side of his cheek. Draegan presses his thumb lightly by the wound. Pulling the skin a little taut to see. He nods. She was right.

“Vampires heal quickly. I’ll get the debris out before it closes altogether.” Draegan says to her. He produces a small clean cloth and grabs a pair of small dull pliers.

“Head wounds bleed fast no matter their size.” Draegan explains as he works.

Kylo curses in norse as Draegan tips his face more to his side and deftly captures one of the bloodied shards of wood and pulls it sharply from his skin. He drops the offending article to the cloth on the bed to dispose of it later.

“There’s that gentle loving touch I’ve so missed.” Kylo japes with him.

“You’re still a terrible patient I see.” Draegan tells him as he wriggles out another splinter. Kylo peers up and locks eyes with him.

“I’m dead. How much more terrible can it get.”

“Well. If that’s the case. There’s no point me continuing. Iris dear. Summon the undertaker.” He jokes back. Kylo rolls his eyes.

He sees it makes his wife smile where she’s tidying up the bloodied rags she used to clean him off with. All down his chest and his face. She’d mopped away the blood that spilled readily from his cut. Head wounds do so often gush with blood.

“Can’t believe you’re making light of my horrific injury. You of all people.” Kylo smiles up at Draegan. Inky hair tangling into his eyes.

That dark hair he so loves on this stubborn impossible head falling in his walnut brown eyes makes Draegan lose a breath. Intimacy of the moment and their words build. Where he stands his legs brushed against Kylo’s knees. Touch slips through him. Reawakening something in him - like sparking electric in dead veins. Long dulled. Now it’s brought sharply back to life.

“You’ve survived worse.” Draegan tells him. Voice butter soft for his first obliterating love. He starts dabbing at the wound now with something that smelled sharp and stung mean, like biting nettles.

Kylo reaches for his demons unoccupied hand. He gently circles his fingers around the pale wrist and brings his hand forwards. Tilting Draegan’s body to let his hand brush against the sizeable scar on his left side. His icy hair slips forwards and hangs prettily around this neck.

He guides him to it. The big arc of slit skin where a soldier had once split his side with a sword. Left him for dead. Until this pale angel of mercy found him- intervened on death.

Dragean swallows as Kylo locks eyes with him and presses his fingers to the cool of muscle of his side. So he could feel the knitted together ridges and healed twists in the silvery healed skin.

“The last wound of mine you healed.” Kylo says.

Draegan cups over the skin in his hand. He heard and felt Kylo’s breathing skip and quicken. He’s watching where his palm touches to Kylo’s skin.

“As if I could forget-“ He speaks so softly. His voice cracks with love.

She’d stepped aside to the basin to wash her hands clean of smeared blood. She looks back and watches them together. So much history lay here between them. And not all of it was pleasant.

She wants to give this moment to them. They both need it. Lord knows they’d both suffered enough to deserve it.

The potency of their buried feelings for each other coming up to the surface is enough to make her want to sob with gladness.

She lays the cloth she was using down. She gathers up the discarded debris in a empty basin and hooks his bloodied shirt over her elbow.

“I’ll go take this to be laundered. See if I can mend this. Save another of your shirts.” She smiles. Her voice almost wobbles.

But not in sadness-

Draegan had once done the very same for them. After he’d given Iris that broach. And he walked off for a jaunt in the woods to give the newlyweds time to adjust to his news. She hopes she can repay that favour to him now. Take his kindness and compassion and pay it forwards.

Kylo looks past Draegan at her and frowns mildly in confusion. Telling her he was about to open his mouth and inform her that she didn’t need to leave.

She wasn’t walking away in jealously. In fact- it was quite entirely the opposite.

Draegan twists his head to look at her. She smiles at him. Such a hopeful little smile. Meets his piercing gaze and she hopes he knows of her purpose.

He knows it like an arrow shot straight into the jagged cold space that should be filled with his heart.

She loves these men. She couldn’t refuse to let them love each other in turn.

She steps to Draegan. To his side. Cups his silver elbow. Leans up on tiptoes to kiss the smooth plane of his warm cheek. Lingers for a second longer than she needs too. Her lashes fan against his brow. He shuts his eyes and savours her embrace.

Granting him love and permission. Not that it was hers to give- no that he needed it. But she gave it anyway. Regardless.

She turns to Kylo and he leans over to better sink his lips up to hers. She presses a soft kiss to his mouth.

“Don’t die while I’m gone you impossible viking.” She grins at him. He pecks her back. Hard. Yet his lush lips are so pillow soft. It tells of his promise to obey her words. He smiles against her mouth.

She holds Draegan’s arm for a second before she heads away. He does her the courtesy of turning and watching her walk to the door. Shutting it in her wake.

The room rings with the silence of her leaving for a second. Her parting. Punctuated only by the low flames burning away to ash in the half. The wind brushing against the sun soaked windows.

Draegan turns back to Kylo. Words lay thick on his tongue. He shakes them loose.

“She thinks we needed some time alone together.” He explained. Rubbing more ointment onto his wound. Now all the splinters have gone. The air hums with the meaning as to his words.

Kylo stops Draegan’s medicinal attentions.

Slips his hand onto his, laces through those pale fingers and gets him to cup flat against his cheek rather than mend his cut. He wanted his touch. Craved it in fact. On his face. Tear his hands into that fine hair. Kiss him and bite his lip to hear his breath stutter.

He just wants that connection back. The one he severed by leaving. He wants the man he loves. And he’s right here. In his arms.

“One thing I’ve learnt about having a wife. Granted I learnt this in a relatively short frame of time- but I’ve learnt that a wife is always right.” Kylo’s smirk tips upwards at the corner.

“You tell her I said that and I’ll have to kill you.” He narrows his eyes. Threatening playfully.

Draegan smiles down at him. Chuckles a little. Swipes his thumb over Kylo’s cheek. He never thought they’d get here again.

“I won’t offer up any argument to that.” Draegan insists.

“Loyal to the death as ever.” Kylo remarks aloud quietly to himself. And he was. He always had been.

Draegan looks down at the scar on Kylo’s side. The ugly one that split and malformed the skin. The last painful reminder of the humanity he had been slid out of. But somehow always kept himself tethered to a tiny corner of it. It’s in the way he cares still. Some vampires coldly do without it. They eschew it in pursuit of too much hunger and lust.

Not him.

He focuses his eyes on another scar. One that curved upwards from his opposite hipbone. A tiny little upwards red flick in the skin.

“I remember all of these.” Draegan pipes up. Running a curled knuckle across His cold stomach. Dragging over the plump muscle of it. Skimming. Softly touching adjacent to where the little pucker of a scar laid. The way he touched him was enough to get Kylo twitching hard in his breeches.

Kylo knows the one he means. “Drank too much mead on a dare and fell into an icy river.” He recalls. Drunken hooligan antics. Egged on by his adolescent friends.

“I know. I remember watching your brothers haul you out. The one time they fetched you out of trouble for a change.” Draegan reminisces.

“They took me home in the driving snow and wind. Teeth chattering. Limbs numb. I laid in bed and shivered for a week straight. My mother was beside herself with worry.” Kylo adds. He remembers once he got better, she hugged him she was so relieved. Then she clipped him hard round the back of his head for being so foolish.

Draegan grins hearing it.

He tilts his head when he reaches upwards to the thin slice of a barely visible crack in the skin near Kylo’s sternum. He ghosts his fingers over that too.

An old battle wound. One he gained when he was a vampire. It barely sheens silver on his skin now. Draegan was the one to patch him up and clean his wound regularly and change dressings so it didn’t become infected.

Kylo’s methods of medical care were not as finely nor expertly tuned. He’d stuff dirty rags on the intended cut and just pour whiskey over it if it started to hurt. And his attempts at stitching himself up often ended in more blood drawn than the injury itself to begin with. And the cursing and grunts as he tried with his big fingers to loop a stitch wasn’t worth the aggravation.

That scar was gained when they were soldiers. Vampire and demon. Lovers. Fighting side by side in some snowy land of long ago. Long forgotten. Some enemy foot soldier managed to get close enough as he was distracted and lance into Kylo’s chest with the tip of a spear. Pushed so hard he snapped the long thing in two. Shoved Kylo back to the ground with sudden force.

Draegan can still hear his cry of pain. Taste the ash and the blood on his dry lips. Dotted with the melting snow. He hates that he still sees how his love just crumpled to the ground- speared like a stuck boar.

“I recall what you did to the man who gave me that.” Kylo recounts. Looking up at him. Darkly in love. Fingers trailing up to the silver brocade of his wrist. He was never in danger. The nature of the attack was so sudden it caught them both off guard.

“You cleaved him in two.” Kylo drawls. Deep granite eyes finding clear shaded blue.

His hand is now at the territory of Draegan’s hip. Stroking over the stiff silver satin. Jasmine cologne and the spicy opulent soap beating off him making him grow harder. For years he hated the merest sight and intimation of those little white flowers.

Now he needs them. That scent makes his eyes roll back in his head. Is there anything more weakening than a lovers perfume? He wants to find Draegan’s warm pulse with his tongue and suck the plain spice of his skin onto the bed of his tongue. Roll it around his mouth and swallow whole. Lap him up like he’s dying of thirst and this man was an entire ocean of plenty.

He wants to push his hungry teeth into this man’s neck and suck violent vampire kisses under his jawbone. Yank hard in the floaty silk of his hair. Keeping him where he wants him as he tastes the moan that’s shuddering through his throat.

Kylo’s breathing is laboured already and he’s only touching his hip. He thinks he may actually die when he gets his hands on the rest of him. He widens his legs and cups his demons hips to pull him harder. Closer.

He comes close with no resistance at all. He yields to the storm in Kylo’s eyes and the lustful tempest in his blood. The deluge rises to meet his own.

Draegan still wasn’t done with his looking. Admiring.

His fingers come to the slashes of the wolf scar on Kylo’s shoulder. Also a mortal wound. Though they’d been through their fair share of battlefields together, gained many wounds and scrapes. But the scars fade so quick on demons like them. They’d gathered up enough wounds to last lifetimes.

Two broken hearts cast sadly into the mix also. Knitted back together now after hundreds of years of separation. They’ll gather up all the shards left and join them back here together on this bed. Each kiss and each touch is what heals them.

He trails his fingers over the musculature there. Slips up and over and cups his strong shoulder. The muscles of him are so crude and big. He’d always admired the way he swung a sword. The way he arches his back and his hips when he rode a horse. The way he gathers close and hugs Iris with these big strong shoulders. The way they feel around him too.

Kylo’s growing desperate. So hard he can feel his cock leaking all over the damn place as it strains inside his breeches for his caress. Impatiently aching. All of him is. His breathing is ragged. Panting. Trust Draegan to keep the beast at bay until he feels like his temples will burst, veins straining, with his wanting.

Draegan trails his fingertips so teasing and slow over the bumps of skin. Kylo’s ready to pounce and rip off his pristine gown. Bite his chest and mouth over his nipples. But somehow he doesn’t want to interrupt his demon’s loving inspection of him. He’d always been good at making Kylo fidget. Make him wait for what he so desperately wants.

Whisper utter filth in his ear and then walk away eyeing him up and down with a flick of that blue gaze. Burn scorching holes into his back all night with his look across a crowded room. Touch his back. His hand. Lightly slightly brush his thigh. But never touching him where he needed it.

He’d smirk and tell him his patience would be well rewarded. Kylo’s mood would just grind down sourer and sourer all night long. By the end of it he was so frustrated and hard that even the rasp of his trousers brushing against his hardness made him want to weep in pain or grit his teeth and slam his fist through the nearest wall.

Just when the edge of waiting became too much. Dragean would always find a way of getting him alone, grabbing his neck in a fist and kissing him so hard he saw stars and gasped into his mouth. Smirking as his other pale hand cupped around Kylo’s cock through his clothes. Soothes the ache he made hurt worse than any blood lust or hunger. He’d crumble under his touch.

Kylo’s reeling him in. Fingers knotted to fists in his clothes. He doesn’t care if he wrinkles the fine garments. He’s peering up at his towering lover. Draegan slips his fingers up the back of Kylo’s neck. Nestling through the thorns of dark hair that lay there. Just holding him.

There are no words. They’ve said them all. They know what this is. What they both feel. They look on each other now with heady fiery lust in their eyes and each other’s names on their tongues.

Draegan cups Kylo’s cheek and hunches down to finally kiss him. Grant them what they both needed. His long hair pushes into Kylo’s naked chest. Silk on hot skin. It makes Kylo groan into his mouth. He seizes his hips. Pulls that damn coat aside from his long legs and takes two handfuls of his firm ass and tugs him onto the bed with him.

Kylo tips back and Draegan catches himself on a palm above Kylo’s shoulder. They both moan when their hard pelvis’s and even harder arousals rub together. Kylo tips his leg up and out and curls it upwards to capture the side of his lovers bony hip. Grinding. Rubbing.

Their kiss was enough to steal every single scrap of rationality left in their heads. The only goal here is passion. And lots of it. Wandering groping hands over fistfuls of naked flesh.

Their kiss was everything. It was sweet and tender and rough. Dragean pulls the nape of Kylo’s neck up to better meet his lips. To better get at those big plump lips he’d missed more than he’d ever realised.

He hums when he feels Kylo tilt their faces to gain deeper deeper. More. Drawing and drowning, diving in the hot satin of his mouth. His nose slants into Draegan’s cheek and it makes him utterly lose himself. Kylo sneaks his tongue along his lovers lower lip, curling against his own.

So humid and so sweet. Sharing breath. Heat meeting cold. Even if Kylo already had a flush at the dip of his throat. Crawling down his chest. He was still blazing cool. Drageans body was was opposite. He was burning up. Addictive heat. Kylo’s smearing his lips against him for more.

They break away when Kylo reaches for Draegan’s hips again. He holds the back of them. Greedy handfuls. Even though it makes him whine too, head tipping back eyes rolling white over black in his head, he rubs their hard cocks together. Grinds up and feels a great new burst of wetness slick down over the crown of his cock.

The kiss breaks- spellbound they gaze down at each other. Writhing with one another.

Ever the hungry vampire - moon drunk love drunk monster - Kylo exploits a weakness. Scoops the long white pour of his hair out his path. Holds his collar out the way, tore the deep v-neck, ripped open that prim damn silver, and launched his lips right for Draegan’s neck after they broke their mind reeling kiss. Sucking his collarbone. Mouthing and gasping like a desperate animal.

Dragean drags their hips together again. Whining his name as Kylo’s sloppy sucks wander all across his neck. Harsh red petals blooming on icy skin. Rare red roses blooming in winter. He shoves his nose into the hair that hangs down under his ear. Drags a deep scent of him. Of all the things that made up his Draegan-

Jasmine, undoubtedly. A scent more him than his own name. It became him. Opulent French Soap. Always French soap. It was the best. The way he can see him rubbing, lathering a white round cake of it across his palm and smearing those same frothy suds all across his sun-drenched skin. He can taste the ocean on his clothes. Spilling into his mouth. A great crushing blue that so reminds him of his eyes too.

This feels like a waking dream. Them being here like this. Uniting in this way-

Kylo shoves his nose into Draegan’s neck as his hands leave the man’s hips. And opt instead for getting that trim silver tunic off him. His hands work greedily. No patience and time for slipping buttons nearly out of their place. He’s yanking open the fastenings as if the garment personally offended him. It had. It covered up a powerful trim body he’s waited centuries to see again.

His fingers turn ruthless, and Draegans naked chest coming into view is his reward. A slice of creamy skin bordered by grey on either side. He likes how the lining of his tunic is a punchy saffron orange to the inside. Warm to the touch from his wearing it. His scent and the smell of warm lush skin woven into every fibre of fabric there is.

Kylo drags it down his chest and pulls it off his arms, it slithers away off the bed to the floor and they both make the move to mould their fronts together.

Kylo slings a strong hand to the sloped divot of Draegan’s back. Presses that big muscled torso into his. Cups a hand to his neck and kisses him again. Clasps him into the cradle of his hips. Pushes their pelvises to meet again. They hump and grins like two randy boys obsessed with touching each other for the first time. As if they’d just discovered the delights of intimate sexual bliss.

Draegan hums when Kylo’s sharp teeth vice around his lower lip. They pull away and share a muggy heated breath for a moment. “Sit up at the head of the bed while I take off my boots.” He commands. Steel edged in his husky voice.

Kylo’s breath emptied from his lungs in a violent rush. He sits up as Draegan pulls off him. Teasing him by cupping over his hard cock tenting his breeches. Stroking the heavy hard curve of him with the flat of his palm.

Kylo lays there, legs falling wide open, up on his elbows, panting and chest heaving as he watches Draegan sit on the edge of the bed, he leans over, that pale back bowing as he works his tight boots off. Gets them to his ankles and throws them away to the floor. Cast aside.

Kylo twists back and works his own infernally tight breeches off his legs. Throwing them away when he’s done. Almost moaning at the sheer relief when the cooler air rushes over his skin. The covers feel heavenly and smooth against his back as he settled onto the mound of clean cotton pillows behind him. He sits dead centre on the bed. Eyeing up how Draegan divests himself of clothes-

As elegant clothed as he is naked. If anything, he becomes more graceful. He was entirely made up of long lean lines. Tall legs and trim hips tapering to a thin waist and then broad muscular shoulders coming down to slender arms. All wrapped up in strong muscles and skin that looks like ivory in the bedchamber light. Sun still flooding the window. Frames him so beautifully. A Rodin statue bulked out in real skin and bone.

He’s dangerously arousing like this.

He was built like the devils sweetest dream. And this is no exception to his fully naked state. His cock is as hard as Kylo’s is. It would be impossible to miss the generous virtue of his endowment; a lengthy upwards curve of a shaft. Rosy pink and flushed full of blood. He’d always had a cock that made his lovers beg for more and Kylo fell under that spell too.

It used to feel so very good pumping deep inside him;

Kylo wets his lips and looks down at his own lap where his legs are splayed. His cock throbs where it lays against his thigh. Sticky precome pulsing out in a viscous pearly smear down his length. Seeping from the tip that’s just begging for friction and relief.

Kylo shifts and fidgets terribly on the bed as Draegan takes his own divine time coming over to him. He grabs him when he comes near and kisses him roughly again. His eagerness blunts his musicality; this kiss is rough and passions filled. Clacking teeth and sloppy desperate lips. Hums pluck at his throat. He holds Draegans neck as he drinks in everything about his divine lips.

When Kylo feels him pull back he’s ready - and hard enough - to whimper like a puppy at the loss of him. Drageans smirking at him. Eyes ravening his agitated lover with their gaze.

“Trust me. For the several hundred years we were apart, I don’t intend on making you wait much longer.” He smirks as Kylo watches his arm reach for something that they’d kicked across the bed when they were busy kissing and writhing together.

Kylo looks as he reaches for a small glass vial. A dark hunter green one. He tips it into his hand and generously all over his fingers. Kylo throbs again hearing the slick noise of it shimmer all over his fingers. Brilliant in the sunshine the half blazes from the window onto the bed.

“Aloe oil.” He explains. “It has its numerous uses-“ He grins like a savage sly fox. All cunning.

Kylo’s head thuds back to hit the carved headboard with a solid thunk when he uses that hand to slip teasing teasing teasing up his inner thigh. Brushing over coarse hairs and the densely packed muscle.

His eyes roll back in his head and he groans, low and slow, when Draegan wraps that very same oiled hand, tightly around his cock. He jerks Kylo with an upwards tug of his wrist. Kylo’s chest bounces on a ragged breath as his heels dig and slip into the bed.

He curses in foul old Norse in a way that his mother would have tanned his hyde for.

Kylo shudders and shakes and all he can do is lie there and let Draegan place pretty kisses up his broad neck as he slowly caresses his cock to within an inch of his remaining sanity. His thumb swipes over the silky head, thumbs at the glossy wet thats seeping out of him. Kylo bucks up.

“ Miskunn-  Draegan. Mercy.” He rambles. His hands fisting the cotton covers too.

He’s begging for clemency from a demon who had little capacity for such a thing. But for his fierce vampire, he’ll relent a little. Draegan smirks as he watched his hand slick up and down Kylo’s girth. He’d so missed this. Not just the intimacy- he’s missed the way he sounds. The way pleasure swims out his mouth so hazy and thick.

His fierce vampire whines when Draegan swings his long leg over Kylo’s hip. Straddling him. He looks up at him like he can’t quite believe what he’s doing. He flattens his hands to Kylo’s ribs. Sweeping along the firmness of him there. Fingers brushing flicks over his nipples that made him throb.

His hair swings so prettily as he looks down to see his lover beneath him. Hair a black swirled mess on the pillow. A storm in his eyes. Wet and shining off his doe brown eyes. Fingers grasped in the pillow behind his head. “I missed you.” Draegan sighs at him.

Kylo tears up and kisses him. His way was always actions over words.

Grabs his shoulder and twists him into a vicious kiss. Needy supping his lips like it will keep them alive. Dragean grabs him back just as hard. Moans shiver along their caressing tongues as their arousals rub together with the newfound angle. Grinding their needy selves together and moaning at the divine contact.

Dragean slides his other hand - the one that wasn’t anchored in Kylo’s thick mane-like wild hair - he slides down until it covers the breastbone. That solid expanse between the giant muscled pecs. Where there sat a heart that was stone cold dead. But so full of love for him. For Iris too- this may have been for them. But they don’t cast her out of mind because of it.

His heart is brimming with so much love that if he was still alive; it would be beating now for love of them both.

“Lay back, lover.” Draegan kisses against the shell of Kylos ear. The whisper slides into his head like honey.

Kylo does as he’s told. He leans back on elbows and Draegan rises back. Shifting forwards a little to get Kylo’s cock behind him, making sure they were both amply ready.

All Kylo could do was moan, and shake and shiver, as he felt Draegan sink down around him. Engulfing him so tight he felt like he couldn’t breathe anymore.

When he fully seats himself, Kylo gasps and his hands shoot for his lovers trim hips. Cupping him forwards and making him grind until he could feel Draegans hard cock sliding into his belly. Warm syrup thick precome smearing onto his abdomen.

And then he started to move-  ye gods.

Kylo felt like his intestines swooped out his body and plummeted to the earths core. His whole lower body shivers with the pleasure that coarses through him so sharp. So sudden he cries out with it because it’s just heaven, warm and wet around his cock like silk and it’s him. His Draegan

The fire in his demons eyes makes him moan so loud he feels it ripple through his belly in wracking waves. He lowers his hips and stops leaning up to ride Kylo. Sets his hips lower- rubs them together.

Kylo swings one leg out a little, and plays with bucking his hips up. His cock is a lot at the best of times. The beastly thing it is- he thrusts a heavy upwards stab into a spot that makes his demon quake with pleasure. Neck stretched back. Hissing sudden with it. Mouth gaping wide, hair slapping down his back and over his shoulders. He struck a spot that unravelled even the most composed man’s poise.

When he opens his shades blue eyes and tips his head down again, Kylo’s clever grin is hungry. Sharp of gleaming teeth and desperate gold eyes watch him now. His hands caress his trim hips and he chokes on his words.

“I missed you- so much.” He admits. Reaching out to wrap his own hand around Draegans where it lay on his chest. Seeking for his hand.

“Touch me-” Draegan asks. Sacrality writ into every syllable. 

Kylo couldn’t bear to leave him wanting. He slides his big fingers in a fist up and down his long - neglected - cock. Precome now pooling sticky on his stomach. Made him more aroused to see it.

Kylo curses out a moan. “Look at you. Leaking all over.  Ugh-fuck I can feel you stretching around me-so good.“ He drawls low. Head back on the pillows. Beads of sweat wriggle down his clammy skin. He’s all flushed from his neck to his belly. Almost rosy pink right down to where the fetching trail of inky hair leads down to the thick base of his cock.

Draegans eyes survey him with their scrupulous look that never missed a thing. They used push and pull and tug. Even in bed- the power may have limitlessly been Draegans, but Kylo used to like to remind him that the balance is a fair one, if he was in a position to snatch the power back. He could.

But not tonight. Tonight is for passions lost, now regained.

They chase after their pleasure together. Kylo starts getting lost. Mania has a heavy hold over the both of them. Their voices are both hoarse with it as they cry out and writhe together. Kylo loses his hold on Draegan’s cock. Instead grips into his hips. Digs his nails in because he can’t help it. Fingers cup his lovers tantalising firm ass as he rides him so well.

“I love you-” Sails on a little gasp from his big vampires lips. His breath is shunted out of him. As is his rational mind. Everything is offered up. There’s tears in his eyes cause he suspects he never stopped loving him-

Draegan reaches out to cup his face “I never stopped either.” He rasps in-between sticky shallow breaths soaked up in pleasure.

Kylo lays back and closes his eyes. Moans to feel him moving above him. Tightness of his ass squeezing his cock so right it was impossible.  Beautiful . But impossible. Drageans hands press firm to Kylos meaty pecs again. Sweat slipping off all over them. They are glimmering slipping with it. These men-

Iris heard the moans. She couldn’t resist it, a glimpse was all she needed. To settle her mind that they were finally forgiving each other- and they truly were-

They were making love.

She’s not long suspected that all they needed was a little nudge. A tiny push and somehow it tumbled right into place. This situation for them.

She went downstairs and delivered things to the laundry. She dawdled for time as long as she could. But something she couldn’t resist seeing was beckoning her to their bedchamber.

She crept back up. Silent as midnight. As soon as she hears those telltale carnal sounds; rustling bedsheets, moans and muggy breath spilling from hot mouths- little prayers and benedictions of names landing sacred on kisses and skin, she knows only one thing.

This is the most unexpectedly arousing thing she’s ever heard-

This thought is what forces her to sneak a peek from from the tiny crack of the washroom doorway. And when she sees them, she gasps. It draws a sigh out of her. She can’t help it. Her heart starts to beat wilder, and it just in her chest, it throbs between her legs too. Certain her weak little thing is trembling so loud that the both of them will be able to hear it- to taste the thump of her heart on the air.

Draegan throws his head back as Kylo thrusts up into him. Both their eyes are closed as they lose themselves in pleasure. Entwined in passion. They both look so entirely beautiful.

Iris noticed where his hair fell sleekly down his back, it sways across the back of his ivory shoulders. And two very long scars curl around the sharp blade of his scapulae. Starting at his spine and flicking outwards in an arc. Two of them. Great big fissures of raw raw scars.

When he tips his head forwards again. Iris sees him smile. She thinks it’s at Kylo. He steadied a hand on her husbands firm stomach. Leaning back only a little. Brazenly not hiding anything. Not even where he and Kylo are joined.

He twists his head to the side and his eyes pierce into her.

“Don’t linger in the shadows spark. Come in-“ He pants. Crooking a knee-weakening smirk at her.

She feels stuck. But nonetheless, on shaky limbs she widens the door and steps into the room. Her slippers crush on the carpet. Every movement she makes seems so loud and foreign. Disturbing their moment- she feels suddenly terrible. Her

cheeks are now flaming pink.

“I don’t- I.” She stammers. Her eyes don’t know who to land on. Her throat is dry. She can feel them both giving her hungry looks. “I never meant to-“ She wrings her hands in guilt.

“Come and kiss me, wife.” Kylo grins wolfishly. Draegan feels how Kylo throbs inside him as he said that.

He knows seeing Iris kiss him will do things to Draegan. And it certainly does.

She approaches the bed so feebly. Feeling almost ashamed that she got caught peeking in keyholes like an errant child doing something she oughtn’t. Kylo lashes out and tugs her arm, his sweaty palm grips her and yanks her to him. Big hand sliding up her jaw and kissing her like a savage man. She’s barely on the bed and she’s sinking into his kiss. Dizzy with it.

Dragean has barely any scraps of restraint left. Especially when Kylo lets him see how he opens his mouth and slips his tongue into hers. Groaning and dragging her bottom lip between his teeth. Making her whimper. He hauls her further, nearer, closer to his sweaty side on the bed. Makes Dragean watch them kiss. He’s moaning into her too as the pleasure looms large over them both. His vigorous passionate riding beginning to pay off.

Kylo reaches down and fists Draegan’s cock once more. Stroking from the head of him all the way to the base. Timing it with the thrusts of his hips. They’re both groaning so much. Kylo can feel keenly how much Draegan is fluttering and clenching around him. He strokes and shifts his wrist harder.

“Watch him cum, Iris. That will undo him like nothing else- fuck .” Kylo spots out, mumbles to Iris inbetween little curses that threaten the crux of his orgasm bearing down upon him too.

Iris is mesmerised. She leans back to the pillows and watch them climax together. Kylo grabs his pale lithe hips so hard she’s so certain that he’d leave bruises. His black-gold eyes roll back in his head, sweat gleams on him as he opens his mouth snd his throat bobs as he calls out loud, finishing deep inside him. Spurting so hard he saw stars.

“ God -yes.” Kylo whines as the pleasure comes and comes and keeps on coming.

Draegan falls on his hands with the obliterating pleasure of it. Grinding himself onto Kylo, whose slack hand was still gripped around his lovers cock, lazily jerking. He shuddered and cried as he spilled over Kylo’s stomach. Grinding and writhing. Until every single thrill of pleasure faded out his body.

He catches himself on his hands as they pant together. Sticky with sweat and Draegan’s dripping cum smeared between their bellies. Viscous and silky wet on rosy flushed skin. They gasp and ragged breaths meet each other’s.

The bedchamber drips back slowly into their realisations. Iris watched the men she loved come back to earth. Swimming down from the hazy dizzying heights of sexual bliss. Sinking down from the cherub scattered rose petal clouds and golden harps of heaven.

Draegan moves himself forwards, lets Kylo’s softening self slip free of him. Shifts back on the bed. Onto his knees. Shifting the mussed covers around his middle to cover his state. Kylo lays there with his legs wide and evidence of Draegan’s orgasm dripping off his hip.

She daren’t be the first one to speak. She just spectated. Worried enough that she’d intruded too far.

Dragean raised his head to meet her gaze. Some silky hair stuck to his sweating flushed neck and shiny chest. His eyes are darker than kyanite. Deep as fathomless sapphires.

“No such thing, little spark.” He puffs. Referring to the fears in her head.

“And if anything about this didn’t feel right to you- if you were moved in the wrong way, we can safely assure you it won’t happen again.” He promises with lowered eyes to Kylo. Who nods.

The both of them look back to her. And tears shine silver in her eyes.

“You’re quite mistaken. I-“ She rasps. She wets her lips. Finds her bravery. “I think it’s wonderful.” She cries.

Iris moves herself forwards and lunges sweetly to peck a kiss on Draegans mouth. He smiles into it. Slings a sweaty arm around her back and indulges her with powerful kiss right back. She tripped over her own skirts to tell them this. To let them know it was agreeable-

That them being together wouldn’t displease her.  Could never. 

Kylo leans back on his elbows, watching them kiss like randy newlyweds. And well they should- it makes his cock hard to see them kiss.

He was only sorry that he interrupted it earlier with his stupid instance of a bleeding head. The sight of them wrapped up together was enough to make his cock leap- thorough divinely great orgasm notwithstanding.

He wants to see them kissing together again. He wants to slink into the fringes of their embrace and suck on her beautiful neck whilst Draegan takes her lips. He wants to grab her hand and place it over his cock as they do, so she can feel what their love does to him-

He waits for them to pull apart before he speaks up. “Next time he rides me spark. I want you,  here , between us.” He says. Pointing to his stomach.

“You wicked man.” Iris flusters with red cheeks. Draegan chuckles.

Kylo winks at her. All savage and rascal.

Draegan smiles around a devilish sweaty lipped kiss he drops on her neck. Sweeping her hair aside. “Seems like an awfully sensible idea to me, spark.”

~

The night draws in. Velvet dark and heavy as molasses. Clings resolutely to the forest, makes all the dark pines loom so terribly. The darkness of the night throws the white stars look devastating in their brilliant brightness. Winking back at the earth with their well clutched glimmering secrets. 

The draw the curtains and let the heavy night come. They all of them cosy up in the bedchamber and stoke the fire. so contented they don’t even leave to take dinner downstairs. Kylo rings down for wine- plenty of it. And asks for a feast to be sent to their rooms. 

Cook delivers as ever she does; sends up a huge platter or cut fruits layered like a rainbow across the silver dish. Mangos, oranges, peaches and figs. Whole piles of cherries and strawberries too. Dried meats, cold cuts and smoked cheeses enough to feed an army. Chunks of freshly baked bread still warm from the oven, and golden butter soft and oozing. 

Some cakes too just in case she felt she’d skimped in her offering of such fine food. A spiced cinnamon ginger loaf soaked with syrup and brown sugar. And that blackberry and Apple jam sponge she’d baked earlier. Curls of dried apple sliced dotted into the top of it. 

Iris feels something squirm in the pit of her stomach as she sees the tray of wine Jomar sent up. Four bottles of it. Rather excessive but she hears not a hint of complaint from her lounging partners. She has to smile wide at the sight of what their clever fiendish Butler had done-

Three French glass goblets sit shining on the tray. She pours them all a glass. 

She had undressed and joined them in their informal state. She doesn’t even leave to fetch her own nightgown - her husband doesn’t allow it. Kylo undoes her dress as he lays a naughty trail of fetching kisses down onto her neck. 

He slips his own nightshirt over her head when he gets her down to her skin. It only comes to a scant measurement of length halfway up her thighs. And the ruffled sleeve cuffs end well past her knuckles. The shoulders slip halfway down her back. She feels ridiculous but he wraps around her with a smile. Naked arms enclose her tightly in embrace and it suddenly feels less silly- every essence of him drowning her. His pine and brambles scent on the clean rumpled linen. 

He picks the ornaments out her hair and leaves her earrings on the side of her vanity table. Freely admired the way her hair falls. Cups her face and drags her into a divine kiss. 

“Now you’re dressed for dinner, Dove.” He hums into her hair as he nuzzled there for a moment. Standing there naked except for the bedsheet that draped like an unprofessional toga around his bottom half. Creamy sweaty skin on rumpled linen. 

Kylo walks away with a smirk, kissing his demon on the way, leaving her now to Draegan’s company as he now avails himself of a scrub in the bath in the adjoining room. 

She can smell his mint soap from all the way in here when he starts lathering himself up with it.Bittersweet peppermint bursts it’s cool heat across the air as he washes away the sweat and everything else from his skin. 

She makes herself useful and pours the wine. Feeling rather scantily clad in just Kylo’s slightly too short nightshirt. 

Draegan had used the bath just before him. He’s now recumbent on the bed, laying contented and stretched out like a man of luxury. His skin still looks a touch damp. Some strands of his hair darkened with it. Sticking to skin. He’s pulled on the robe he left in here. Tonight is a opulent scarlet-wine silk. He almost matches the dim red walls. He looks so at home as she walks over and hands him a glass of burgundy. 

The fire they revived roars a great churn of orange and saffron red. It kisses across his marble chest where the gown spills wide open. 

He sits up and takes the glass from her. “Thank you spark.” He beams with such affection in his blazing eyes it was almost blinding. Tonight they are red gold off the flames in the hearth and it makes her lungs feel like no more than mushy warm liquid. 

She settles down next to him at the head of the bed. Making herself cosy once again in the rumpled nest of the sheets. Careful with the way she draws her knees up and resettling with her back pressed to the numerous plump pillows. Red velvet covers and cotton under her bare legs. 

They sip their wine and look longingly at each other. Iris is the one to avert her gaze first. He can admire her so brazenly. She isn’t quite used to the attention of it yet. She’ll get there in time. He wagers it will soon feel natural to share looks like the one he’s giving her now. 

His smile really was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. One of those natural wonders she can never forget. She felt the same way when she first saw Kylo’s smiling at her in exactly that same way. That melting intimate way that gets every one of her nerves sparking and fizzing like freshly poured champagne. 

He sups his wine before turning and standing it on the bedside. As much as he adores a good Château Haut Brion, he far prefers the taste of her kisses to be the only taste left on his tongue tonight. 

He slips down and nuzzles into her side. She turns and cradles her glass as he finds the skin of her shoulder and a curl of her hair laying there. She smells like woman, and warm clean skin. Cologne on Kylo’s shirt. Her golden pear perfume on her collarbone. It makes him smile. 

He runs his hand over the plump stretch of her thigh and her hip. Warm and rounded under cool cotton of the shirt. They lean against the pillows and Iris shifts a tiny lock of hair off his cheek that threatened to slide down and block his eyes. Nothing should ever deign to hide the sight of those pretty eyes. Nothing ever could. 

She feels such pain that he had to hide himself away from her for all those years. There were times when it must’ve been so painful. To have known she caused him agony - even unconsciously so- it hurts her now they can address it. 

He doesn’t say how he’s heard her. Instead he kisses her. His velvet tongue tasting all tannic and smooth. Tipping gently into her mouth. His hand spreads across her cheek and draws her in. Their breath bleeds into one. He’ll never tire of kissing his sweet little spark. All his touch starved years are behind him. Now he’s here, he seeks to overwhelm her with touch and affection. She’s not the only one pleased by the fact he doesn’t have to hide anymore. 

Their peace is shattered - again, when Kylo strides back in. A fresh nightshirt swathing his big body as he ruffled his inky hair dry with the flannel to hand. Getting water out his ears. His hair sits less fluffy and groomed. Still wet it sticks back to his head. Aftermath of his scrubbing up peppermint soap still swirling around him. 

He grabs himself a glass of wine and joins his heaped lovers on the bed. Shoving his body into Iris’s back. Smacking a fleeting kiss on her brow. “One thing I want to know-“ He pipes up. 

Iris laughs at the feeling of his wet cold hair slipping across her neck where he cosies up into her. 

“How did you know? What made you leave us together like that?” He seeks. How was it she knew exactly what they needed to express and he didn’t even have a clue about it himself-

“ Kylo -“ She tilts her head at him. A reproachful tone. Meets his gaze. “I’ve eyes in my head haven’t I?” She says 

Draegan chuckles. “She could run rings around you my love.” He says to Kylo. She’s got his character pegged. 

“How many years were you two together? How many apart?” She asks. Not expecting an answer. Not requiring one either. Kylo ducks his head and smiles a plump kiss onto her 

“It seemed like something you both needed to realise.” She turns to Draegan. “You said a similar thing me once; what is a greater healer than love?” She repeats. 

He smiles at her honesty. 

“And I knew it would take more to persuade you, dear husband. You’ve a stubborn head. Thicker than a rams skull. You far more needed the nudge.” She declares. Patting his hand where it lay around her tummy. He’s cuddled around the shape of her. 

“Such a wise and worldly wife I have.” Kylo purrs in thanks. Kissing her cheek. The tip of his nose prods into her cheekbone. He meant it. Not everyone would recognise what letting their spouse make love to another would mean. This unusual marriage is seeming to become them all very well. 

Draegan sits up to reach over for his wine. Smiling at his newlyweds candour with each other. Thankful for her wisdom in seeing what they needed. She watches carefully as his arm stretched out, his robe slid down his back. His hair covered it but she still gasped a sharp little dagger of a breath to see the scars on his back from up close. 

She doesn’t need to say his name. He knows what she’s looking at. They captivated her earlier. They captivate her again now. The scars run long and their pain still cuts bone deep. The mood of their bedroom changes. 

Kylo’s hands drift off her as she sits up. Kneeling on the bed with her knees tucked under her. She reaches for the silk robe. Her fingers dance hesitantly on the hem around his shoulders. He turns back and his hair shifts, rolls in white waves over his upper arm. He didn’t say a word but his meaning was clear. 

_Go ahead-_

She draws it down further. Taking the silk down past his ribs. He sighs when she bares them in their entirety. He sits still at the edge of the bed. Letting her horror filled eyes sweep over him. 

The only horror that takes her is how much agony it must’ve been. How such a monster could’ve done this to him. They look like they were only made days ago. Healed and such angry red marring such perfect icy skin. It looked like someone had dragged a brutal blood-dripping dagger through the snow. Such savagery took see on such a beautiful, graceful body. 

“It was a long,  long, time ago spark.” He soothes. 

His breath hitched when she shifts closer. A tiny brush of a fingertip slides along the top of the left scar. A mirror image to the right. Angry curves sliced deep into his back. Skin rumples and twists when he moved his shoulders. He’s not ashamed of them- not anymore- but when he goes to slide his robe back up his arms, her stubborn fingertips stop him. 

A shudder rolls over his entire body. He shuts his eyes when he feels her lips on him. Kissing gently where the scars began. And if he let her she’d kiss every inch. Blot out that agony with a huge clutch of her love for him. 

She rests her forehead against where his spine joined to the base of his neck. Palms flat to his trapezius muscles. He’s composed of such elegant slopes and limber lines. 

“It must take someone awfully cruel to make such marks on such a beautiful body.” She speaks against his skin. The pure hum of her words sink into his bones. 

“I wasn’t born as others are. I was made. Designed-“ He offers. “My existence didn’t begin in this realm.” 

He turns back. Cradling his glass of wine on one thigh. Scarlet silk spilled and crumpled up in his lap. Robe back torn down his back slanted. One shoulder bared. Still sat at the edge of the bed. He continued explaining. She sits back and listens to all he has to say. Her tentative hands reach out and touch his knee. 

“I wasn’t always on this plane. Usually in the one above or below it. I was an angel. One of the highest order.” He describes. 

Iris understood how that could be. His beauty told her of that the second the saw him. She always thought he’d make a brilliant. Seraphic was a word that could have been tailored to him. 

“I was made to blindly serve, and never to question my obedience.” He comes to a steady stand. Moving across the room to pour himself more wine from the side. Gliding. Talking as he moved. Angry red copper from the fire spun into the deep opulence of the red silk that swathed him. 

“But I did question.” He says gravely. 

She may as well see him whole now. The disgraced angel with torn ripped scars where his wings once sat. 

The slow slosh of his pouring himself some wine descends the silence for a moment. “I refused to kill innocents, so I was cast out and made to reap souls for eternity as penance.”   
  


Iris’ face is pure torment as he walks back across to the bed. Sipping more wine and holding the glass level at his chest. So calm. And yet he’s talking about something akin to his demise. 

“Your scars-“ She begins. 

“An agony like death when they ripped them away. Let me fall from grace.” He says. Sitting on the bed again.  


He eases back into the pillows. Lounges back. Kylo strokes her hip again. She was so moved by hearing this. He’d been the same state when he first hurt. Impossible agony. 

“Weren’t you scared? It must’ve been-“ She can’t even use the word pain. That sounded to paltry. Too ineffective. 

He chuffs a chuckle. 

“I just told you that I started out as one horrific monster, and I was cast out to be turned into _another_ horrific monster. Yet you are concerned more over the fact that I was scared-“ He ushers kindly. 

There are tears in the corner of her eyes. 

He’s drawing her close with an arm around her back. Pressing a ruby wine tasting kiss to her forehead. “Yes I was terrified. The pain was my desolation ten times over. Killing me would have been a mercy.” He explains. “They maimed me instead. Let me wear my scars and my shame.” 

“So it was that this plane became my home. I gathered up a fair few souls over the years in my various journeys.” He finishes. 

“I’m so sorry.” Iris peers up at him. 

Clasped into his naked chest. With Kylo wrapped around her back. They are all here. And snug. That’s all he’s ever imagined. Her husband runs his hands along her side. Caressing. Soothing her through the story of Draegan’s past. 

He looks down at her in his hold and his smile tips up in one corner. Wordless connection blazed between them. 

“It was an age ago.” He dismisses gently. Leaning down and kissing her nose. His lips are petal red and painted with the cherry oak of wine. 

“I’ve found more life and fulfilment on this earth than I had in my life before it. I’ve got all I may ever need, right here in this bed with me.” He smiles all charming and slow. 

“I’d only ever existed until I felt you both on my horizon. You taught what’s left of my rotten soul, how to flourish. So I don’t need any single ounce of sorry for that, Iris. Trust me.” He smiles. Cupping her head. Kissing her temple again. 

Clutching her in a passionate hug. She can smell the soap of him. Jasmine flowers and the sea. The silk of his gown. She lets it wrap her up in the comfort it offered. 

Iris lays her head against him. Tucks it into his chest. Clutches Kylo’s hand. Feels her husbands chin nudge onto the round of her shoulder. 

This slow lazy night required little else of them. For nothing else needed to be said. All was said and done. 

~

  
  



	38. Errands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We do stan a grumpy 1000 year old vampire. And darn gone it to heck folks we’ve reached 400k words for this here fic. How in the Huckleberry Finn has that happened?!? 😅

Paperwork. Reams upon reams of paperwork. Stacks of it tower tall. Layered everywhere upon his desk. Oh, how Kylo detested it mightily.

Had he known a Lord’s seat took quite as much bureaucracy and pencil pushing as the hours he had to spend in servitude of it, he would’ve turned down the title when it was offered to him.

He admits defeat to the bloody nuisance of a thing. After breakfast he trudged along the brightly lit hallway to his study. Looking in envy upon the housemaids he passed with their trugs of rags and polish and feather dusters. He’d give anything to swap places. Right there he’d gladly put on an apron and dust a parlour or plump up some velvet cushions on a settee. Beat a rug. Groom and muck out the horses.

Anything but this arduous agony-

Jomar would tell him he was simply being childish. Kylo grumbles at the thought of allowing his impertinent Butler to be right, as he stands in his study doorway. Mood deflating already to see the stacks that waited him. The fire is lit. The large apple green velvet curtains, trimmed with rich gold tassels, have been shaken free of dust. His scarlet leather and walnut desk chair sits awaiting his singular form to fill it. He growls and grumps.

So it is he manoeuvred himself into the room and took his seat. Sun slanted spilling onto his back from the window. He feels it leeching gold through his white cotton shirt. Hitting on the sapphire satin waistcoat his valet forced upon him today. He loosens the strangling knot of his black cravat. His collar brushing his cheeks. He may be a Lord but he wasn’t going to suffer choking civility of dress in his own damn castle.

He reaches for the first paper that lay in wait for him. He can’t remember ever having been ambushed more horribly in his life than with bloody sheets of infernal paper. Definitely the most horrific ambush he’d had to suffer.

“I hate you with every fibre of my earthly being.” He grunts at the stack of correspondence. Dipping his quill in the inkwell and perched ready to read and write.

He detests it doubly because it was a pleasant day. He’d far rather be out of doors.

The days are starting to draw out from the dark heavy and not to mention bitter, winters. Like someone unfurling a roll of sweet light blue gossamer. The sun shines earlier. Lifting the dawn. Spring is well and truly arriving. The days grow clearer and bright. Powder blue skies over the forest that once looked so familiar cloaked in thick snow. Golden sunshine beams its restorative glow over the landscape. Things start to bloom here, in the gardens. Shaking off the sluggish dead of winter. Warm dewy mornings waken him.

Soon pollen shall start drifting on the air. He’ll be able to smell the honey powder sweet of it. Able to throw open his doors and windows and let the light and sun spill in. Sunshine bleaching whites pegged out by the laundry. Soap, sun and green twining into their fibres. Searing summer light kissing on his eyelids like holy fire. He could picture it already. The flowers in the gardens, thorny white roses shivering in the hot dry wind. That wonderful slanted amber of a late summer afternoon light as the swallows dash and dip across the cloudless sky. Endless churning old sun.

He huffs as he begins to make his way through the letters. Ink smeared on his fingers as he dribbled melted blood red wax on the paper and mushed it under the silver stamp of his house crest. Wolves dance in the sticky blood. He sets it aside and sighs bitterly seeing how small his completed task pile is.

Climbing out the window like he usually does is looking rather tempting as of now.

He brings over the next tax letter with little enthusiasm. Drags it onto his reach. Sits and reads its contents. Tried not to yawn as he devoured its information. His mind had little tolerance for this today. There seems to be a million other things he’d rather be doing. A trip to hell and back. Pluck out his leg hairs one by one. Go and let that stud throw him into a tree again. Anything, anything, but this-

The door latch goes and the great chunk of aged oak swings inwards. Kylo had to halt himself gladly throwing his letters aside to please, dear-merciless-god-please, invite this person in and let them keep him occupied and busy for hours upon hours.

His dead heart soars up in his rotten chest to see Draegan gliding elegantly in and shutting the door after himself. One large and capable hand holding a bottle of wine. Today a warm golden-beige brocade coat is spilling finery down his chest. Dark breeches and grey calf boots clinging on his long legs.

Kylo watches his untouchably sleek hair sway across his shoulders like the wall of white gossamer it is. Never disturbed. Never mussed. Every facet of him forever poised. His hair was always looking like some divine entity guarded it for him.

He turns and sinks his cool cobalt gaze into Kylo’s. He smiles at the ink smeared over his vampires hands, stray smears of tulip red wax. His sleeves are pushed up and his wild hair is exactly the kind of mussed that lets him know he’s dragged his fingers through it so many times in frustration and annoyance. Paperwork was the bane of his existence. It always has been.

“Something the matter?” Kylo frowns. Asking in curiosity as to why he’s in here.

Draegan takes a slow meander past the warm fire and stands at the other side of Kylo’s desk.

“Nothing is the matter.” He smiles fondly. “Except you forget that I can remember just how much you despise paper pushing.” He eyes the strewn leafs of paper scattered everywhere in an arc around his lover.

He reaches out a hand and presses the curled up side of a tax document down to scan over it with his wisdom soaked eyes. Idly tilting his head. Rings on his fingers of twisted silver and big smooth stones gleam and catch the sun.

He holds the very seminal 1788 Grauburgunder vintage up in his hand to Kylo’s eye-line. The one spiced with pears, apples and quince. He knows it’s from the more precious corner of his cellars back home. On that shimmering sun soaked isle. A very fine distraction, offering this to him in his hour of need.

“If I’m to stay at Ranlor for the foreseeable future. I should like to make myself useful-” He comments. Kylo smiles.

“Let me help.” Draegan bargains easily.

He moves - graceful and slow as the bough of a sweeping willow tree. Across to the side table where the decanters and crystal cut glasses were neatly kept. He plucks two short stemmed wine goblets out, tips them over to stand the right way up and uncorked the wine and smoothly poured them each a large glass. Liberal golden wine sits shining in the two glasses.

He hands one to Kylo as he takes a seat opposite his own. The desk and a thousand hours work strewn between them. Pulling hair chair flush to the desk, sipping his wine as he awaits instruction. His lengthy legs almost meet Kylo’s through the arch under the great carved two sided desk.

Kylo’s leans back in his chair and cradles his wine glass close after taking back a great slugging mouthful of it.

“You’ve heavily peaked my interest and also earned my eternal love and thanks.” Kylo says with a grateful curl of a smile. Handing him over a stack of correspondence.

Draegan takes the papers smoothly from his grasp. Glacier eyes skimming the pages. Kylo can’t help it. He watched him devour the page with his eyes.

Flicking through, he reaches for the spare quill near the inkwell, sinks the tip of the sharp frail nib into the gloopy dark. Lets it bead away and scratches words on the document in his slanted italic cursive. Such grace even in his penmanship. Kylo’s own rune-like strikes and dashes reflected his very early schooling. No elegance to his printed scratched letters laying simply on the pages.

“You’re staring-“ Draegan tells him as he writes upon the margin of the paper. Kylo sips his wine again and smirks.

Leaning all the more back in his creaking chair. Letting his legs almost tangle in with Draegans. His booted feet resting near his lovers. Some small intimate semblance of touch. Let’s his ankle drape against his limber legs. Stroking their limbs together.

He’s such a studious creature. He always had been. It had always been enchanting to see him in this manner. Eyes concentrated on his task. Kylo knew how deep his love for him went, when he just wanted to admire him as he did something as banal as reading a missive or a map stretched out before him.

“Am I?” Kylo asks. Not looking away for anything in the world. He smiles wider.

“Are you going to have my eyes put out with a red hot poker for the insolence of my gazing?” Kylo teases.

“I didn’t say I disliked being stared at.” He drawls in a smile. A smoky tone that simmers into lust.

He turns his eyes back to Kylo’s letters. But his smile stays crowning his lush mouth.

Draegan lays his quill down for a second to drink some of his own wine. Meeting the whiskey warm eyes that study him so closely. The warmth of their connection blazes between them. It’s not lost on the pair of them how heartening it is to find themselves here again. Flirting words tripping off their tongues behind smirks and stealing longing looks.

Lust. It’s by far more palatable than the anger that went before.

“As much as I’ve dearly missed your longing moments. You have a mountain of paperwork that desires your attention and trying to seduce me with that look will get you precisely nowhere.” He smiles resolutely. Smile sharp and cunning.

Kylo’s smirk is wide and his eyes gleam in annoyance, but he accepts defeat. Annoyingly. He’s right. He’s always infallible and correct about things.

The sooner he’s done with this, he supposed, the sooner it was he could wrap his fingers in a handful around thick strands of that godlike icy hair and yank him across this desk for a kiss. Taste the bittersweet wine on his fine mouth.

“Pass me the wax and the seal.” Draegan asks. Opening his hand to receive it. Kylo passes it across as he finished tearing open another letter from his Solicitor. Reading the contents with a drawn down brow as he concentrated.

Nothing surrounds them but the warm glow of loving familiarity. The ability to exist peaceful in the same space; along to the smouldering crackle of the fire and the sun warmed smell of old wood and books.

And thus their surprising union turns into a fruitful division of labour; they manage to half the enormous pile of Kylo’s utter grumpy distress in merely a couple of hours. The clock on the bookshelf wall chimes and ticks over; signifying the lateness of the afternoon. Kylo can tell the time merely by the way the sun slants and cuts through the heavy dark of the forest.

Kylo gets more and more ink stains on his hand. Shaking out his fingers every now and then to keep from cramping. Stretching them from hunching up his hand to hold a pen. Draegan doesn’t spill even one drop.

A gentle knock on the solid wood of the study doorway causes Kylo to bark out orders as he doesn’t even look up from the ledger he’s scanning over. Neat rows of scrawled indifferent copperplate showing the tally of the household spendings. Every rich item accounted for.

“If you’re my impertinent annoying Butler. Go away. Anyone else, I bid you enter in safety-“ He calls out into the silence as he drags a fingertip down the page.

Draegan gives him a chiding look. Sharp eyes flicker upwards to his love. Though still he’s smiling.

Iris appears in the gap of the door she pushes open. The creak of the old thing heralds her entrance. Kylo peers over to see she’s wearing a thick sapphire wool riding coat over deep sea blue skirts and dark lace boots. Her hair is done finely into one of her maids usual neat arrangements, pretty dark curls spilling down the nape of her neck.

Golden teardrops hang from her ears and she is undoubtedly dressed so fine to go out of doors. A woven basket nestled in the crook to her elbow. Her smile grows seeing the both of them in here, happily together. She closes the door and steps inside the calming edifying space. Kylo likes the way her earrings sway and shimmer against her neck.

Her riding gown and a cloth covered wicker basket of full goods can only ever mean one thing; riding out to visit a tenant or two.

“Good afternoon-“ She says fondly to them both, eyes flickering looks between them, as she steps flush to Draegan. Opposite Kylo at his desk. She’s pleased to see them in here.

“I see you’ve finally enlisted someone to help with your business matters.” Iris remarks to her husband with a drawn back expression of humour. Her smile however, was not prohibitive of such joy. She beams with it. One grey suede gloved hand crossed over the other as she stands and beams at her men.

Kylo flicks his eyes up to his wife with a fake expression of snide enthusiasm.

She side eyes Draegan cleverly. “Has he tried to sneak out the window yet?” She seeks.

“I plied him with wine and stern warnings. It seemed to work.” Draegan answers her. They’re both gazing at the darkly dashing Lord, who daggers looks into both of them stood opposite. Hmpfh-ing as he slides another piece of paper into his grumpy hold.

“If I wanted to be ganged up upon, I’d go and spend time with my insolent Butler or my foolhardy horse.” He grumbles. His words hint at his ornery of a mood.

He hadn’t expected both his lovers divine to be the ones set against him in such an impertinent manner. How very dare-the gall, the insolence.

Iris tilts her head. Her smile softens and that in turn does something gentle and sweet to her grey eyes. “I meant only to tease my dear. Never to wound.” She comments.

“Are you still riding out and accompanying me to visit the Beckers?” She dares ask.

Kylo quirks a kind smirk. It tips up at the corner of his lips.

“I wouldn’t deign to refuse you, my dove.” He answers. Happily throwing down his quill and stretching out his arms and back.

The Becker’s were a family of four who lived on the pine dusted borders of where the woods met the local town. Mr and Mrs Becker were, by trade, bakers. They owned the two fine shops in town. Always busy. Their cottage and the adjoining windmill where they grind their own flour, sits well within the territory of Ranlor’s land.

They are sweet hardworking people. Blessed with two adolescent sons built like beanpoles who work at the dairy near their home. Iris has visited the dear family a fair few times with Kylo. And each time they press warm loaves of bread into their hands to take home. So many different variations; pumpernickel, rye bread, sourdough, or sunflower seed bread . It’s never a meagre offering- each time it is a whole baskets worth simply stuffed with glorious warm breads, and rolls. Iris’s particular favourite is a dark seeded walnut and date loaf, that just tastes like warm golden heaven with salted butter.

And they do make butter too, they keep cows and goats and churn their own milk to make the most tasty yellow round cakes of salted butter shes ever had. Such an industrious family.

Kylo’s needing to see Mr Becker to oversee the damage some frost had taken bad in the windmill rotors. He’s going to inspect said damage and have someone come and see to it. Their livelihood does hang in the balance after all.

And now she’s here to coax him away. Riding habit on. Boots laced up. A basket of goods tucked on her arm for the generous baking tenants they were going to see. They supply Ranlor, and half the villages around here with bread. The least she can do to repay them with the gifts crooked on her arm.

She had ready for them a dead unplucked French goose with a blue ribbon tied on its neck. It’s surrounded by citrus fruits. Fat oranges, bunches of cranberries and bunches of fresh bay leaves, all grown in the hot house. She also saw to it that no less than three bottles of scarlet Dornfelder wine and one of Cooks famous cherry and almond pies were included too. 

His Lordship rises from his seat. Unfurling his body into use once again. Watching as the demon opposite reached for Iris’s hand and drew her nearer to his side so he could shift her glove up and place a kiss on it. His kisses should always fall upon her bare skin. Always-

“You’re welcome to come if you should wish?” She asks Draegan with a kind smile as he encouraged her to cosy up to his side where he sits, lounges on his chair.

“Thank you spark. But I believe I’ll be better dispensed here.” He brings her hand close once again and uncurls her fingers. Her glove still peeled down. He places a sensual kiss to her open palm. Feeling how his lips made such a sharp arrowhead of lush lust shoot right up her arm. Bursting bliss in her blood.

“Go see to your tenants as Lord and Lady. I’m vastly contented to remain behind buried in a stack of Kylo’s papers.” He insists. Righting her gloves. How devilish- redressing her appearance after making her silly with kisses and affection.

He looks across to Kylo who grins at him in gratefulness. “I’m so attracted to you at this moment.” He growls. Smirking because he’s offered to stay and slave away at a task Kylo himself hates.

Dragean’s resulting smile is white as a cotton field and sharp as a knife.

This makes Iris chuckle. They may bicker like an elderly fish-wives sometimes, but she’s never doubted to their attraction that runs deeper -deeper than any vein can ever go.

“Off with you now.” Draegan smirks at his Vampire. Nodding his head to the door.

He smirks and steps up behind his wife and presses his big nose and a kiss to her cheek from behind. Humming in pleasure as he did. Her soft cheek and her teasing slip of floral soap and perfume sneaks into his nose and makes him ravenous. He slings an arm around her stomach. Holding her close to him. Letting her feel his hips and his body behind her as she stands there with Draegan kissing and holding her free hand.

Kylo loves seeing the way they lace their fingers together so sweetly. In a way that’s become so natural to them. The more he sees them kiss and caress and reach for each other, the more he wants to just grab them both and cover them in kisses. He can’t describe how carnal it makes him feel- virile and lustful as all hell.

It makes him realise how much they’ve all seen of each other- in various states of nakedness, and what he wants to see still. What’s yet to come. Something he never considered at first-

That being that he so desperately wants to watch them together. Move together. Making love. He wants to watch moans trip from her lips as Draegan fucks her into the mattress of their red crimson bed.

When he thinks about that perfect demonic body sliding and pumping himself between Iris’s spread eagled thighs, he nearly goes feral at the meagre intimation of the idea. That divine pale ass bouncing with his thrusts and sweat slicked down his back as he watches her nails rake down his shoulders-

He soothes away the thought as he nuzzled a kiss into the crook of her neck before stepping back and heading for the door. A smile leaves its lasting impression on his mouth. Better savour that thought of his lovers when he didn’t have business to attend to, or a horse to ride out.

“See you in a while.” Iris smiles to Draegan. He almost mourns the way her hand slips from his. He nods them both a farewell and a safe ride out.

Kylo leans over and steals a sweet simple kiss from Draegans lips with a satisfied hum before he disappears. “You’re an angel.” He teases nicely smiling near Draegans mouth before he leaves.

“You’ll pay for that.” He rasps provocatively at his Vampire. Iris is in the doorway smiling so at their loving candour.

They part from their striking pale demon, watching them go with piercing loving blue staring them down before he adjusts in his chair and gets back to the papers. Pouring more wine for his trials, picking up his quill once more. Unto the breach.

Iris and Kylo stroll together through Ranlor, making their way to the stables where their two horses would be tacked ready.

Erland for Iris and a stocky and sweet and very old shire gelding, called Alvis. His name also bore a Norse origin. Named after a dwarf who was turned to stone.

The steel calm grey of his coat reflected this. Studded with big pebbles of grey all across his flank and his shoulders. He had a long unruly frizzy white mane and tail, and feathering of the same ivory colour draped down over his hooves. His nose was a rosy pink and he’s a creaky old man who doesn’t mind being ridden by anybody. Always chewing on his hay and happy to be taken out for a calm ride at times.

Kylo had rescued the poor old soul. He was being worked to death from a cruel old master who worked the old boy to skin and bone in a textile mill. Left the gentle grey giant in such neglect. When he was too weak to be of use anymore, too starved and too much bother to dispose of, the master had abandoned this calm horse in the woods to meet his fate in whatever way deemed best. Alvis lost one of his eyes when a pack of scrawny wolves tried to chance at making a meal out of him.

So weak he couldn’t stand. Just laid there in the snow bleeding and starving. Trembling and matted with mange.

Kylo heard his distress cries through the trees. Barely loud enough to detect. He’d gone so long without water, his tongue was swollen. He could barely chuff or whinny.

He rode Erland out to the spot where the old giant lay. Bleeding. Half blind. He chased away the snarling pack of scrawny enemy wolves that wandered too close to Ranlor’s borders. About to sink their teeth into the gelding.

Erland got so vicious in defending one of his own. He chased and kicked, stomping down at the mangy wolves until they were driven out of sight. He hurt a few of them too, judging by their yelps.

Kylo sunk to his knees in the snow and felt so horrible seeing an animal treated in this cruel way. He stroked the horses neck in soothing pats.

“You poor creature.” Kylo presided in a soft whisper with an aching heart. He was a monster. And yet the cruelty of men could outstrip even the likes of him sometimes-

He had wanted to put the giant out his misery. Half blind. Emaciated to saggy skin stretched over jutting bone. Maggots festering on the sunken socket of his missing eye. Lashes of old whip marks scarred across his bowed back. He reached for his pistol. It was cruel to let the beast suffer like this.

Erland wouldn’t let him-

He bit Kylo’s hand until it bled to make him drop the gun. Snorted loudly at his master. Nearly pushed him clean off his feet into the snow. Bruised him. Beat him away from the ailing horse.

The stubborn young stallion laid by his friend and nuzzled him. Nudging him to get up. Nickering his ears. Laying down beside him and refusing to budge when he couldn’t stand. Even when Kylo called him too. All Erland did was lay his own legs over the horses own weak ones. Keeping him warm. Keeping him alive.

“Erland. You are being ridiculous.” Kylo shouted at his horse.

Still he did not budge.

Kylo, hurt and dusted in snow, had to walk back to Ranlor himself. And when he returned hours later. Erland was still there. And this injured grey giant clearly had such a stubborn will. Life clung to him like the many diseases and injuries he was afflicted with. Kylo returned with a team of stable boys, pitchers of water, and hay and food, and a warm coat for the old boy.

Erland only let them near him when he was certain they wouldn’t hurt him. He lunged at the first few men who came near. Butting them back, as if he were a feral tiger in a cage.

Kylo managed to smooth away his fears when tugged him aside by his bridle, and let Erland see they were only giving him a drink and washing the maggots out his wound. Draping him in a coat and giving him something to eat. It took some prying but he eventually ate the apples and carrots they shoved down his neck. A whole crate-full. He drank all the water they had. They gave him poultices for his sore untrimmed hooves. They mended him as best as they could.

Erland taught him that hope was a precious commodity. One that was never to be lost, even in the face of hard times. Kylo saw that he himself in fact, was the one being ridiculous that day.

Since then, they managed to get the grey giant back to Ranlor and nurse the shabby old thing back to health. Now he was a fine figure of a horse. A gem of Ranlor’s stables. A little advanced in his years perhaps, but the strongest farm horse they could boast off. He was retired from all heavy duty work now. But a ride out in the spring forest was a manageable task for him.

The most affable creature on four legs, was Alvis. Temperate and so sweet. Softer than butter and such a docile thing to ride. All he wished to do was eat hay and sleep. And Erland remained a firm friend even in Alvis’ even more gaining and greying age.

When Lord and Lady come to the stable yard, they see this pair of horses tacked and ready. Erland is stomping at the cobbles and Alvis had his head in a bucket of chaff. Chewing away.

Erland whinnies so loud when he see’s Iris come into view. Scraping and stamping his hooves on the floor. Shifting so much that he bumps into Alvis. It didn’t disturb the old thing one bit. He just carried on chewing his hay with the same lazy interest.

“I’m riding the dignified one. You get the insane stallion on the left.” Kylo’s leaning over and saying cleverly to his wife with his hands crossed behind his coated back. Jomar handed him a thick black wool greatcoat before they stepped out of doors. The air was growing warmer. Icy cold slipping further away. But still riding was a cold occupation in a shaded wood with a cool spring wind blowing through.

“I think he’s darling.” Iris sticks up for Erland.

“He may be darling to you. But you’ll never believe what happened the other day. When I got thrown and staggered back to the castle. Struggling for my life. Bleeding and injured-“ He whines. Emphasis and stroppiness emphasising his words.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining, it was barely a scratch.” Iris points out with a smile. He carried on undeterred.

“And when I walked past the pastures...“ He lamented.

“Staggered you said.” She dryly comments.

“Staggered- past the pastures. Erland decided to whinny loudly. Laughing at me as I stood there with leaves sticking out my hair.” He grumbles.

Iris smoothers back a laugh. “Can horses laugh?” She asks with love.

Erland snorts. It does sound vaguely mocking.

“That one bloody well can.” Kylo nods at the beast. Side eyeing the stallion as he strokes the curved hill of Alvis’ bowed grey neck.

“Am I going to have to separate the two of you? Or shall I knock your heads together for good measure?” Iris asks as Kylo kindly takes her basket from her as she prepares herself to hoist up onto Erland’s back. The great big idiot lowers himself for her. Bending the knee for his mistress.

“He deserves censure for being so unfeeling toward the one who feeds him. Ensures his every comfort.” Kylo nudges Erland in the shoulder with a prod of his leather gloved finger. Erland tossed his head like butter wouldn’t melt.

“How dare you be so unfeeling, Erland. Towards his Lordships frail dignity.” Iris huffs as she gathered herself to mount up. Not sounding at all sorry. Matter of fact she was smiling.

Kylo definitely sneaks as long a look as he can manage at her gorgeous arse pressing up at her coat under her dress as she heaves herself up and slips her legs off to the side. Settling that plump bottom he loves grabbing at on the saddle. Well concealed away from his groping palms.

Iris holds Erland’s reins in her hands. Fixing with her gloves. Settling her skirts in a pleasing manner. Her husbands great big palm whomped down heavily on her thigh as she sat side saddle.

“I missed how we rode together on our honeymoon-“ Kylo crooned up at her with a dark smile. Shade passing over his whiskey eyes. Her blush tells him how fondly she remembers. New heady freedom’s enmeshed with the giddiness of their wedding and all their encounters of sheer conjugal bliss. Their time in the highlands was just a relentless memory of warmth from cosy fireplaces, whiskey warming the pit of her belly, so much fine food and Kylo’s plump kisses. And then less delicate recollections-

That divine sensation of when his cock pumped deep into her- so deep she can recollect it in the pit of her stomach. Sliding bliss feverishly into her blood with the way he hammered his hips to hers.

“I remember dearly.” Iris smiles back at him. Her cheeks felt full of too hot blood. Burning at the cool of the air surrounding her.

“I miss your back curled into my chest and my arms as we rode along those rocky glens and Scottish hills.” He reminisces with a much too naughty smile. Leather of his glove moving across her wool skirts slithers up in the air. He reaches around, feeling for the back of her hip. He finds it and wraps his fingers around it. Her breath jumps in fits and starts-

“I miss that perfect little arse rocking into my thighs. You must’ve been able to feel how every time you shifted back against me, how rock hard I was.” He smirks. Stepping himself closer to where she sat atop Erland. Her hip on fire from his touch. Her body wracked with shivers from the husky sexual tone of his voice.

She leans over and cranes her neck down to nudge her lips onto his. She tries to pull away rudely early. He kissed more into the enchanting curve of her smile as he gripped her chin. Didn’t allow her to retreat. Not when he’s stood here, aroused and desperate to kiss her lips and wrap his thick strong trunks of arms around her. Feel his muscles strain at his restrictive coat sleeves.

What he really wishes to do is tug her off that fool horse and go and find an unoccupied stable stall wall to bend her over. Throw her skirts over that pert arse and take her in the bloody stables the way a stallion covers and mounts a mare. Their boots shifting on the hay together as he thrusts into her with hard punishing slaps. He wants to taste the loud screams off her lips.

But they did have business to see too- pleasures of sinking into his sweet wife can wait for now. He hates that it will wait. But he’ll shelve his arousal for the time being.

He doesn’t wish to break the delicious kiss. Stood there craning his neck up to taste her, her basket of goods in his other hand as if he were an obedient errand boy employed in her servitude.

Only so much better- each day he wears the gold band she placed on his hand with love and fidelity. In a way he is wholly hers to command and boss about- he wouldn’t have it any other way.

When they pull apart from his domineering kiss, she sees why. Kylo’s gritting his teeth in sheer annoyance. She seemed to be pulling away, and not of her own behest at all.

Erland is shifting her sideways. Backing away from where they’re kissing. Taking Iris away from their embrace.

Would there be any other way? Erland would throw a fit if Iris didn’t ride him. He snorts so contented and happy when she gets seated on his saddle. Nickers away like a mad thing.

“My horse loves me a little too much I fear.” Iris counters back with a winning smile. An almost laugh hovers beyond her smile. Erland shifts again where he stands. As if to encourage her onto their ride all the quicker. Raring to go. Not letting her waste time on such niceties as kissing her beloved husband.

“Impetuous cretin.” Kylo snarls at the big horse. Rolling his eyes as he makes for his own unbothered ride.

She drags her fingers through Erland’s wiry smooth mane as Kylo steps up to his much calmer gelding. Patting his hand against the solid arc of Alvis’s neck. Feeling the cord of his muscles and the meat of him quiver as his jaw swerved together on the bundles of chaff hanging out his mouth and down his whiskered white chin. Alvis turns and sees who it is patting him with his remaining good left eye. The right one was closed grey seam. Knotted together in a wrinkled-pink stitch in the grey velvet of his coat. His speckled ears twitch forwards when he hears Kylo talk to him softly.

Alvis and Erland stand side by side as their riders talk to them.

“Hello, you creaky old man.” He greets.

Iris can hear the rasp of his leather gloves sliding along Alvis’s neck. The big beast was so docile. She rode him once and he just clops along on his big chunky hooves at his own behest. Happy to go where he’s led. Stumbling along at a steady pace.

Erland is obedient too. But there’s a mightier and somewhat pluckier-cannier spirit to that horse than anyone perhaps gives him credit for. He was oft blind to orders and commands when it suited him. Kylo called it his ‘selective’ hearing. And he doesn’t even hear Kylo’s commands anymore.

In no time at all, Kylo slips his boot in one stirrup and grabs the pommel to swings himself up and seat onto Alvis’ back. Patting his neck and letting him walk on after a gentle nudge with his heel into the grey giants big belly.

“Walk on.” Kylo bids the calm giant. Reins held in one powerful hand. He commands the steed he mounts. Alvis finishes chewing his pail of chaff and walks on as ordered. Gently his powerful legs stride forwards and Erland is quick to follow where Alvis leads.

They walk down the pale lane and onwards into the forest. Down the sloping hill. To move deeper under the divine spread of the green trees. The pines loom large and towering above them. Both horses draw up beside each other where the lane widens out.

Iris likes the way the sun passes through the branches. She’s seen it in every occasion. With rain and hail bearing down from the heavens hard as bullets. In sparkling bright snow flaking off the branches. With the yellow sun dappling on thorough. Every branch in frost with the sun beaming down? It looked like yellow jewels on every inch of the tree. Incomparably beautiful.

Today it looks like spring. The woods feel like spring. Everything new bursting into life. The shoots that dagger up bright green through the earth. So many plants coming back into their ferocious greenery. Lovely lively nature takes over this once frosted landscape. Vines crawl up from the roots of the trees. Ferns and moist and dark loving plants find happy homes nestled at the root of every tree.

Iris looks to perhaps the most beautiful sight of all- her husband riding a mere few half paces ahead of her. She watches how the sun makes such beauty of this creature of supposed darkness. Oh, he does look so brilliant belonging to velvet dark nights and splashed in full moons watery wash of light.

But he looks delectably fine in the bright sunshine too- such a pity when darkness is the thing he clings to more often than not.

She watches the breeze, cool and indolent - sweeping along from the base of the perpetually ice kissed Mountains in the distance - how it combed through the back of his hair. Ink and russet. The sun brought out the little burnt umber of his colouring. In the moonlight it was raven swallowing black with white gleaming off it. It’s made different here. In this lighter tone of the day.

She likes the sun slanting onto the bobbled grainy soft texture of his wool coat. His tails pointed back over Alvis’ grey back. His immense thighs straining in his breeches where they situated either side of the horses middle. He turns his head and listens to a cuckoos call softly shimmer through the trees. A calming little sound.

She devours his handsome profile as he tilted his head to the sky. Looking up into the trees of his land. His broad features and his creamy skin. The curve of his nose and the rosy pillow of his lips. Sometimes dry and a touch chapped from all his excursions riding out of doors in the cruel winds, but that didn’t matter when he kissed her so. His kisses soon made her forget her own head

Such radiant beauty. She saw the boyish softness that still lingered in him here. Admiring that gentle humbling little sound in the woods. An echo of home. He smiles lightly at hearing the cuckoos call. She wonders if he heard it in his youth. If it made him think of his rowdy brothers and his humble-as-the-salt-of-the-earth Viking roots.

He turns back to where she’s admiring and catches her eyes on him. She doesn’t blush. She doesn’t turn away as she might’ve once done. She smiles instead. He draws Alvis back so that they might come level as they walk along under the merry sun.

“Why are smiling at me so, Lady Ren?” He asks. Pulling back the reins to keep Alvis steady. Arms flexing in his coat. Hips rolling with the lumbering gait of his ride.

Her smile creases wider. “I’m allowed to smile at my Lord am I not?” She asks with a note of teasing.

“Heaven forfend-“ He affronts playfully. Skimming his eyes down her body and her legs. His hungry look. And it wasn’t for his culinary appetites.

“We haven’t ridden together for a while.” He suddenly brings up. An innocent enough statement. And a true one.

“Upholding an entire castle and a Lords seat. Lot of things to keep running.” Iris supposed. Patting Erland’s neck when he nickers as he trots along.

“Thank heaven for Draegan stepping into the fray in order to aid you with your paperwork.” She adds.

“If I leave him there long enough do you reckon he can finish it all?” Kylo wonders aloud. Considering it.

“Kylo-“ She censures him crossly. A widely tone in her voice. “That is most unfeeling.” She comments.

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll help him the second we return.” He promises flatly.

“Don’t shirk your duties, Lord Ren. Or you’ll have me and my wrath to contend with.” She warns evenly.

“That man loves you dearly beyond measure and you’d repay him for that by making him attend your papers like some inane second-rate secretary.” She points out.

Kylo grins in good humour. “One must suffer in the name of love.” He tried to immaturely argue. “And he does have a very artful neat hand...” He adds. As if he’s actually reviewing the matter.

“If you remark anything else on the matter I will take serious measures-“ She insists.

This makes his dark brows shoot up his head. “I rather like the sound of your measures.” He purrs.

“You shouldn’t. I’ll get Jomar to help me enforce some rules. He’d be only too happy to oblige me. Perhaps we can source to employ a nanny to enforce governance over your wild ways.” She smirks in a promise.

“Now whose the unfeeling one, woman?” He asks with a frown crowning his brow. She laughs at his stroppy expression.

Erland whinnies. Kylo side eye and glares across at the beast. Points a stern finger.

“I’ve had quite enough out of you as of late, you overgrown donkey.” He snaps at the horse.

Iris feigns distress for her steed. Strokes his neck. Tells him not to listen. His black ears twitch as she speaks. Kylo’s mumbling something about her spoiling him rotten.

They come to a turn in the road that forks along to the lane leading into town. A few riders often take this path to Ranlor and out beyond up into the mountains and the villages dotted thereabouts. A trap cart pulled by a pony rattles up along the road ahead in the distance. Bringing wool from the farms the next county over to be washed and scoured. Obedient sheepdogs are piled on the bed of white curls as the trap bounces and jumps along the ruts in the road.

They clop slowly along the road. Coming into the bustle of a little village. Men and ladies, maids and people scurrying about on errands walk along the lane. Going about their business.

Iris sees the picturesque timber village is at its usual pace. Women beat their rugs out of Tudor crossed windows. Dirt shifts down onto the cobbled muddy street. Littered with feathers and hay from the daily market.

Men water their horses in the fountain. Animals and poultry are penned into said market in the town square under a yellow eye of a cool sun. A baker had his door open wide selling last minute loaves and buns still leeching warmth from the oven.

A large flock of dirty white geese honk loudly being driven in by their keeper. The taverns are busy. Maids queue up outside shops waiting for their wicker baskets to be filled to take home meats for dinner. Life pulses in even the little town. Livening up with spring taking hold.

Kylo and Iris pass by the market and watch the animals being sold and bartered over in rowdy german. Goats and cows and ponies all awaiting new homes. Erland has to be kept on track when they pass the greengrocers stall. He was known to favour apples and it wasn’t above his dignity to try and pinch one off the crate.

They walk through the genial narrow little town. Weaving through crowds and bidding good day to all they knew. Kylo was a well known face in these parts. Iris is becoming more so.

They soon come to recognise the medium height bespectacled man coming in their direction. With a balding ring of tawny hair around his head, always hidden by his top hat. He’s dressed in a finely pressed coat and shining boots. Always wears a hat and is meticulous. The brief case he carries in his right hand is organised neatly and always kept to hand. Herr Baumann. Kylo’s excellently famed solicitor.

“Guten tag, Herr Baumann.” Kylo calls across. “Wie geht es Ihnen?” He seeks as he calls Alvis to a steady lurching stop. Nodding his head in greeting at the man.

Herr Baumann returns the polite greeting in tipping his top hat at them both. “Guten tag. Herr Ren.” He nods back. He bows his head again to Iris who stopped Erland by Kylo’s side.

“Your Ladyship.” He greets to Iris. Holding his hat over his chest before slipping it back atop his head. His english was far better than that of Iris’s grasp on German. She was learning quick. But some things still were beyond her. His smile is genuine for the both of them. He’s a happy and precise man.

“By chance, I was just on my way to the castle to ask after a meeting with you my Lord.” He tells.

He looked rather ruddy in the face. On his way to the rank to catch a carriage to take him through the woods and up to Ranlor. This usually pressed and polished man looks unsettled.

“Oh?” Kylo quirks a curious brow. He won’t discuss his business loudly from the top of his horse for the whole village to peer in on his private financial affairs.

He swings his leg over Alvis and slid quick off his back. Thudding to the ground and holding the old boys reins in one strong hand. His coat slaps to his ankles as he comes to the ground. Steps close.

“What’s happened?” Kylo seeks. Grave seriousness sneaking into his voice.

“Per chance the business venture we were discussing only the other day has resurfaced to my attention in the face of a competing buyer placing an opposing offer. I’m afraid the bad news is that the particular lot of land you were lined up to purchase has had to go to back to auction to seize the best bid.” He explains. Nervously wincing as he delivered the news even though it wasn’t his fault.

Kylo nods. This wasn’t terrible news. More running along the vein of an annoyance. A meagre thorn in his side. He’d been looking into procuring this stretch of farming land as an investment to add to his shares and stocks. He hums a thoughtful noise.

“I am still interested in procuring this parcel of land.” Kylo announced decidedly. Undeterred by outsider attention on this property investment venture. It wasn’t in his nature to be scared off.

“When and where is this auction taking place?” Kylo asks.

“The day after tomorrow. In Norderstedt.” His solicitor offers with a pinched brow.

“I’m most sorry for the short notice. My Lord. I only received the letter myself an hour ago.” Braumann flattens his hand to his chest.

Kylo waves away his concerns with a smile and a calm flick of his hand. “It’s no matter.” He reassures the man. It’s not his fault either.

“Norderstedt is quite some several hours away, even by coach.” Kylo considers. Tilting his head. Chewing the inside of his lower lip.

Kylo glances around and meets the concerned eyes of his wife as she sits atop her steed and strokes Erland’s neck. She gives him a look that seeks if she can help in any way.

Kylo turns back to his solicitor. “I believe a trip may be in order.”

~

Yet another thing that had crept on Kylo’s list of most hated things; packing. He detests this almost as much as he does paperwork. And he is the type of man to be very vocal about his displeasure-

Judging by the racket that’s coming from his dressing room. Iris summons a guess that he’s got half the nearly kept shelves and wardrobes mussed to high heaven. Wilton might faint when he sees the mess his grumpy Lordship has made. Cravats, shirts, waistcoats all rumpled and tugged out their resting places. Strewn all around as Kylo attempts to pack-

It was usually the job of a man’s valet to pack for him. Poor Wilton. He had tried. But in the end, Kylo had been so coarse and moody the Valet literally threw his arms in the air and walked sharply away to go and imbibe a brandy. Kylo was in one of his vexing moods tonight. His temper burning on a short fuse because of the sudden occurrence of having to take an unplanned trip away for a night.

He’ll set off early tomorrow morning. Travel to Norderstedt by coach. Arrive and spend the night, attend the auction the next morning and then travel home. His solicitor will journey there tonight to be there when Kylo arrives in the morning. He’s spending the night in whatever tavern, boarding house, or beer house that can comfortably lodge him.

Another growl flies out his mouth when he bends down to try and gather some cravats into his arms and a great pile of shirts falls on him from the shelf above him. He curses and when he moves up he bashed his head on the sharp corner of a shelf. Growling even louder- kicking the walnut cupboard nearby in recompense. Denting it with his massive booted feet.

Iris and Draegan are recumbent on the bed. She’s laying on her side reading a very good book - a favourite - that she can’t really pay much attention too with the racket her husband is currently making. Every five seconds there seems to emerge another growl or a grunt.

Draegan is laying directly behind her. His body curled into hers. Her back pressed to his chest. Arm laying over her hip as he lays there and slumbers into relaxation on the pillow. She’s dressed for bed. They both are. He bathed in his chambers before coming to keep Iris company. As Kylo was presently otherwise occupied. Draegan joined her on the bed. Soon laying his own occupation of a book aside. Focused on curling up into her. Listening to her breathe. Stroking away her loose hairs at the nape of her neck.

He’s laying now behind her. In his velvet blue robe and some slate grey breeches still clinging to his legs. She can smell the soap he uses - such a strong scent. Silky cashmere wood melding with the sweet ruby-jewel of pomegranates. It’s sinful for a man who looks as he does to always smell so alluring aswell. Doubly wrenching. His scent envelopes and welcomes anyone who comes close to him. Iris’s timpani little heart beats faster just detecting the drift of his perfume near her.

She’s melting away to a puddle now, as he lays there, legs tangled with hers as his fingers stroke along the back of her neck and set every vein in her body alight. Soothing loving touches. She’s trying to concentrate on a passage that she’s read atleast ten times. Her eyes almost rolling back into her head in bliss.

“I more than anyone appreciate the succour of a good book-“ Draegan smiles. Laying his fingers over hers and gently shutting the book. Feeling her curl back into him. “But perhaps some things are best left aside.” He persuades as his nose nudges under her jaw and presses a silky smooth kiss there. Under her ear.

“Your eyes look heavy, spark.” He speculates. Gently crooning his words against her skin as he closes his eyes and savours her. Of course he’s right. She is rather tired. The purple puffiness of bags under her eyes betray this.

A long ride and business matters have sapped her of all energy for today. She gladly drops her book to the bedcovers and succumbs fully to Draegan’s hold. He pressed another beautiful kiss to her throat. She sags back against him fully. Humming in bliss as he holds her to him.

She slides her hands along his arms wrapped around her belly. Slips her fingers atop his. Nuzzles into the pillow he’s on.

Let’s her head rest near the crook of his neck and chin. He rests his lips on her forehead and kisses her there sweetly.

She feels so serene in his arms. As he encourages her to lay hobbies down and just rest.

The racket of one large vampire lord trying to cram things in his luggage trunk still calls through from the other room. A particularly savage growl disturbs the peace of their quiet calm.

Stomping treads storm the floorboards beyond Kylo’s dressing room. Iris peers over to see his frame filling the gilded doorway as he snaps into the room beyond. His hair is mussed and he has clothes fisted in his big hands. A rogue cravat - or three - is draped over his shoulder.

“Am I supposed to deal with this goddamned catastrophe all on my own?” Kylo asks. Frowning at the pair of them in annoyance. Not with the fact them in their current state of embracing was annoying him, but rather he was incensed at being able to not complete his current task.

Where Iris lifted her head. She raised her brows and tilted her head at Kylo for being so childish.

“You scared away poor Wilton when he tried to offer you assistance in packing.” She points out. Rather unhelpfully to Kylo’s ears-

Draegan rises to a graceful stoop behind Iris. Resting on one elbow. They both assess the storm cloud of an angry vampire stood pouting moodily at them.

“Don’t dare move a muscle spark.” Draegan tells her. She had no intention whatsoever of doing so.

“I believe the very term coined for this predicament of yours is that you bit the hand that feeds you.” Draegan smirks. His eyes looked too damned dueced clever.

His dark frown deepens marginally so at Draegan.

“Kylo, my love, you are packing for one night and two days away from Ranlor. Not I might point out, for a years long voyage up the Nile. It cannot be that complex.” Iris seeks.

Kylo raises a brow. Sweeping his hands down himself. Panting with his painful kind of annoyance at the two of them right now.

They had to go and be annoyingly right.

“You try dealing with my so called valets ‘indexing’ system.” Kylo waggles quotes with his fingers as he spits the words with disdain. “I’ve never known a man to take such pleasure in organising a clothes cupboard.” He snaps.

“I ought to dismiss that idiot. You know the other day he had the temerity to tell me I wear too much black also? The gall.” Kylo rambles angrily, voice muffled and quieter as he steps back into his dressing room. Shouting out to his two lovers on the bed.

“He tried to force a yellow waistcoat on me. Butter yellow silk.” He calls out. Offended.

“Heaven forfend.” Draegan quips. Iris bites back a laugh. She smothers it into her hand. She twists around to face the pale demon at her back. So close the piercing blue of his eyes stuns her. Sheer electricity jolts at her when she looks at him.

“I feel sorry for him. Maybe I should go and offer assistance before he injures himself?” She supposed quietly. Whispering.

Draegan doesn’t loosen his hold on her. He strokes his one hand over the bony hill of her hip. Wanders over the climes and dales of merry sweet England.

“He’ll appreciate his triumph far more if it’s of his own design when he eventually succeeds. Trust me.” He assures her. Combing one lock of hair off her shoulder where it pooled in the divots of her neck.

She turns back and locks eyes with this calm beautiful creature laying out behind her like a dream. The best kind of dream. One with endless searing blue skies, fluffy cotton clouds and golden harps stringing tunes of heaven. Eden may have been in the oasis of his eyes. But absolute divinity ghosted out his every touch as he loves upon her with the caresses of his hands.

There comes another bash. A louder angrier one following that. And then a snarling sound that was similarly like Kylo kicking his luggage case shut as the damn thing snapped down on his finger.

Iris winces.

Kylo comes out the dressing chamber, thumping his boots on the floor in irritation. He carries his luggage in his arms. Incensed with it. He drops his large case to the foot of the bed, and gives it a stout kick before coming to pour himself a strong drink. His toes throb as he pours himself a brandy and sinks it down his angry neck.

Iris looks down on the case and sees he has shirt sleeves and cravats trailing out the lip of the lid. Lolling along the floor. All the contents within doubtlessly heaped and jumbled together.

“Did you remember to pack your boots? They’re in the far cupboard.” She reminds in a quiet voice.

Kylo’s grit teeth suggests that he had very much not.

“Bugger it. I’ll go naked.” He snarls. Draegan and Iris chuckle quietly together. The corner of Kylo’s mouth quirks up.

“You’ll make a winning impression in no clothes, I’m sure.” Draegan promises him.

“Stop being flirtatious with me. I’m too annoyed at present to enjoy it.” Kylo smirks. Trying to be surly still. Supping back a great chug of French brandy.

“Maybe you’ll apologise to Wilton in the morning?” Iris suggests. A wisened wifely tone of order to her voice. Ever the peacekeeper.

Fighting the urge to go and kneel in front of his luggage and tidy it up a bit. Fold some things so they don’t get crushed and creased. Smooth out his waistcoats and make sure he’s not forgotten his shaving soap or his boots.

“Maybe.” Kylo grumps. Shrugging in indifference. He will. He’ll give the man a bunch of roses for the hardship. Packing was a hell he was willing not to endure ever again.

“If you come over here, I could flirt with you again? Might take your mind off it.” Draegan offers. Still curling up behind Iris like a leisurely big cat dozing in the sun.

Kylo considers it briefly- When he looks across, Iris pats the vacant space on the bedsheets where he should be. With her sandwiched between them. He ambled over to the bed in an ursine manner and lets himself get tugged into an embrace.

Iris laughs as he virtually squashed her to grant her a kiss. Draegan too. Leaning behind her to cover their faces in kisses.

“Would you help me fold my clothes?” He has the cheek to pout at Iris. Asking in-between hungry growling kisses. Sticking out his bottom lip in an attempt to be pathetic.

“ _No_. Kylo. I won’t.” She smiles. Kissing his cheek. Patting it thereafter. She tells them both to quiet down so she can read her book.

His eyes travel over her shoulder. Where she had her nose buried in her green leather book. He meets the icy glacier of Draegan’s eyes. Goes to ask him-

“Do not even go there.” Draegan shakes his head, warns him with a smirk. 

“After all, I’m only a second rate secretary with a neat hand.” He daggers his eyes into Kylo with a clever, clever tilt of his head. 

~


	39. Partings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I will say this; Jomar ships the hell outta them

The sudden creak of a rusty old luggage hinge brought Kylo rousing to life midway through a particularly ungainly snore.

The sound startled him.

His body jerked up where he lay on the bed. Splayed across it entirely, clad in just his his nightshirt that fell down and open wide over his chest. The lacings loosened. Hem of it riding up his thighs. His nightshirts are all so comically short on his massive frame.

The downy pillows behind him rumpled and shifted as he raised his head. The room is dim and he turns his head to see Iris curled up cutely, nestled onto the pillow near his. Hands slanted flat under her face, tucked under the pillow as she slumbers deeply. Not woken by his stirring.

The sweat cradled in the divot of his collarbone indicated he’d been resting deeply. It sheens on his brow in the low light and he noticed the demon sized space in the covers behind Iris is remarkably empty.

A sheet of white silk he can see facing away from him. Across the dim red of the dark bedchamber. Where Kylo dropped his luggage trunk earlier, thats where Draegan is now. Knelt on the floor in front of the leather case. Gently pushing the lid not quite closed on its jumbled contents.

He hears the rustling of bedcovers and looks over to where Kylo is sat up looking across at him. Hair a swirled dark mess, and little drips of sweat sliding down over his cold chest, in the valley of his breastbone.

Draegan thinks he looks insanely irresistible when he’s only just awakened. He looks grumpily ursine. Thighs splayed out on the bed where he sleeps like the densest rock with his limbs strewn every which way. Trying to wake his slumbering vampire has always been a challenge.

Kylo finds his piercing blue gaze. His curious frown of enquiry carries across the dark room. Draegan smiles back and rises graceful and slow back to the full authority of his vast height. His gown shimmers down his back as finely as his hair does. That ever steady and fine wall of ivory silk. Never a strand out of place.

“I took pity on your hideous mood of earlier.” Draegan smiles at his lover. Gliding across to where the fire languished sluggish in the hearth.

Going for a drink that sat in a decanter on the walnut dresser by the door. Amber glowing fire shrouding him. Crackling snapping low as the velvet black night drew on. Kylo leans across and kisses Iris’s forehead sweetly. Pulling covers up over her shoulders and slipping out of bed himself.

Draegan has already poured him and Kylo a drink of the dark ruby wine left in the crystal decanter. Dripping a silky thick measurement of the Argentinian wine into the two glass goblets on the silver tray. Kylo can almost taste the notes of it already; brambles and sweet, underlined with a rich taste of dried figs and spice.

He lumbers across, and gladly takes the glass from his offered hand. Thanking him and taking a lazy sip. They both do. Stood by the two red armchairs posed on the Aubusson rug, placed in front of the mantel.

Kylo looks across the dim dark of his room, peering though the ajar lid of the case, to see a neatly organised trunk of his belongings. All folded and ready for the morning. Right down to the pair of boots and the pile of clothes left pressed and out by the chaise. Ready for him to slip into in a few hours time when dawn starts to slash its light across the sky.

“You do love me-“ He comments. Smirking at the demon opposite. Draegan holds his wine by his side as he steps close and slips his warm hand around the back of Kylo’s neck. Grants him a slow kiss. Addictive lips pressing to his mouth in indolent pleasure.

When he pulls back - rudely early - he speaks against Kylo’s lips. “Was my love for you ever seriously in any doubt?” He whispers against their spit wet lips. Bliss still thrumming in their veins as they entwined together.

He soothingly runs his thumb down Kylo’s jawbone. Stroking the defined carve of it.

Kylo _hmmm’s_ an unsure sound. Plucking one more kiss off the man he loves. Leaning in to taste those perfect wine stained lips. “I could argue you were being unfeeling earlier.”

“You’ll let it go now if you know what’s good for you.” Draegan smirks. Easing him into another gentle kiss. One that pressed and lasted and made Kylo’s stomach swoop low. His kisses still made sparks fizzle and rush in his blood. A sensation he welcomed so wholly.

Kylo’s always harboured the somewhat secretive and unbelievable idea that Draegan could make his dead bones, sing with bliss.

Draegan steps back a little. Sliding past his lover and draping his hand across his stomach as he does. Settling down in an armchair. Throwing his lean legs to one side. One crossed over the other. Legs bare. Gown closed at the middle but always open in a slice of material showing off his pallid chest. Skin as smooth as marble. His wine glass he holds, resting on one thigh. Relaxing back in the chair.

Kylo wanders over to the opposite chair. Stands his wine down on the table next to him. “I have missed bickering with you, Verros.” He smiles.

Groaning as he lowers himself to his creaking clicking knees. Sliding and shoving his hands into the seat either side of Draegans hips. Forcing his hands into the narrow cradle of the seat. He leans in and nuzzles his nose against the silk of Draegans ribs. Resting on his knees and trailing a kiss over the pallid breastbone under his warm skin. Soap and Jasmine climbing into his senses. The demon below him shifts his legs so they split either side of the gargantuan chest that’s wedging itself inbetween his knees.

Draegan can’t resist- he runs his fingers through the ink black mess of hair on Kylo’s head. Shifted and disorganised from sleep. He cards his fingers through the curls. Strokes over the back of Kylo’s head as he nuzzled to rest his chin on the man. Peering up at him from his ribs.

“I know I seldom need to ask this of you, but, look after her in my absence.” Kylo seeks. Brown eyes shining fire and sheened in lovely warm amber as he looks up. Ever since Draegan first saw those deep eyes, soaked in shadow and blood, such anger and fear, he’d been lost to them. Swallowed up whole.

Scarred by the expressions in those soulful eyes as his life was draining away.

Draegan can feel his words. They rumble against his hand through his skull. He can feel them humming onto his chest. Kylo brings a hand up and clasps it against his chest so he can cushion the bone of his chin on it.

He doesn’t even need to think about articulating a response. “You know I always will.” Draegan says with deep meaning. His words fall from his lips like the prayers that once sustained him. Sacred and avowed.

“But-“ He adds with a lighter smile. “if it makes you feel better to hear me admit to it, I certainly shall.”

“I wouldn’t leave her in any other circumstances, nor entrust her to any other to keep her as safe as I could.” Kylo promises. He sees Draegan’s oasis eyes are so full of understanding.

“I know that too.” He declares. Both men turn their eyes towards the bed where she sleeps. Shrouded in cotton and velvet sheets. All alone in the cotton clutch of a sea of white sheets. As if he was laying across tumbles of clouds in the heavens up above.

So serenely she rests. Amidst covers the colour of plum blood and snow. Cold spring night air bitter pressing at the window. The once flickering fire now sleepily dying. She rests in the safe assurance that they are guarding over her.

Kylo turns to look back at Draegan, and he sees his eyes are still fixed on Iris, over on the bed. The soft smile that lingers on his lips - Kylo reads a fault in it. It’s been weighted and left wanting.

“What is it?” Kylo asks searchingly. Draegan meets his eyes again. Strokes his hands through that black mane again. Black silk feathering against his skin. Brambles and pine drifting up to him. Verdant and vibrant.

“You may think me old fashioned to say this-“ he begins.

“Of course not my dear old relic.” Kylo smarts.

“I know we fell straight back into our lovemaking like we’d never even been apart. However, I do wish to court her.”

This makes Kylo smile. Matter of fact it makes his heart leap.

“Then court her.” He offers. Kylo looks at Draegans chest as he slides his hand up the warm pale sternum.

“You didn’t have the time with me. You had to act or you would’ve lost me entirely. You have the time with her. _Seize_ it.” Kylo commands.

“Drown her in flowers. Pen her verses and sonnets. Candle lit dinners and romantic liaisons in the gardens if you wish.” Kylo encourages.

“Our honeymoon in Scotland was exactly that. And it was bliss. I want you to have your bliss with her too.” Kylo insists.

He meant that in more ways than one-

He leans in and places a clutch of slow, deliberate kisses to Draegan’s ribs. Right near where his heart should reside. He does it to hear his breath skip. And it does. It shudders out his mouth. Makes his eyes slide to a slow shut. His head tips back into the padded red cradle of the wingback chair.

All the breath and a groan leaves Draegans lips when Kylo leans up and kisses up his collarbone and onto his throat. His big nose prods at the places where his pulse should be living. Meeting only warm flesh that burns bright with the scent of him. Catalan Jasmine and silky woody soap. Dark feathers of black hair brushes at Draegans neck. Bleeding into the stark white of the long locks of hair that spilled down his back. Even this unshakeable demon had weak spots on his body.

“I wouldn’t want her to think I just wanted her for the sake of seducing her. That’s not the reason I came.” He tells. Breathing jerky through the true bare pleasure of Kylo kissing his pulse.

“She knows it isn’t. I know it isn’t.” Kylo presses.

“You suspected no more of me when I first arrived, no doubt.” Draegan offers.

“I confess I did.” Kylo owns up to it in full. “I thought worse than that even.”

“I thought you’d come to hurt her and teach me a lesson over what it was like for you to lose a great love.” He offers.

Draegan drinks in his words with a lump sitting in the back of his throat like cold flint. Pricking sharp pain outwards from the jagged edges. Kylo had once thought so little of him. And he didn’t blame him for it. It was well justified. He was after all designed to be a cruel creature.

“I thought you’d slip back in and cause harm. Try and divide us.” He says. He sits back on his heels and slyly joins their hands together. Still kneeling at his demons feet yet still coming half way up the chair like the huge Viking he was.

He looks where their fingers join together. He had such big fingers compared to Draegans slender ones. Their hands weren’t that vastly different in size. But in every other way they differ. Draegans hands are soft. Kylo’s are scuffed and calloused and littered with his once human scars and little marks he earned as a soldier and a farmer both. Back in his raucous boyhood. Dragean’s hands are pale as untouched ice, Kylo’s are more weathered.

“Only now I see how that was just me still putting my anger over our parting, on you.” He offers.

Draegan scrutinises him with a clear serious look in his eyes. “I realise I dragged up a lot of things by coming back here the way I did.”

“You couldn’t have sent a letter- that would have been far too simple.” Kylo says dryly in amusement as he smacks a teasing kiss against his lovers sternum. The look in his eyes is both flirting and jeering. Kneeling between Draegans wide knees like an excitable canine at his feet.

“We both know you would have torn it up and burned it, you stubborn Viking.” Draegan points out. One hand lifts and he gently strokes a long curl of raven black hair out of his eyes. Kylo tilts his head to the touch. Smile touching his lips.

Kylo’s stomach heats- he had an obscene memory associated with that touch. The way Draegan would do it when they were making love. Cup his face, move his hair off his sweaty brow. Anything to see his face as they took of each other like they were starving. Sweating and writhing together. Grabbing each other for more. Obscene images of them together floods his mind. Draegan shifting his thighs open to let Kylo hammer deeper inside him. The look on his heavenly face as he slides his cock into him so deep, he sees stars burst in his closed eyelids and feels every which way his blood is pulling and rushing in his body.

Kylo can’t deny that he most likely would’ve done exactly that, had he seen the familiar handwriting or the postmark from Greece on a letter that came addressed to him. He would’ve been able to smell the scent of jasmine curled cleverly into the cloth like paper and know instantly who the sender was, not caring about that at all, not even opening it before he cast the missive into the flames of a fireplace to be devoured away to ash.

“As usual you’re right.” Kylo hums in an afterthought. “ _Damn_ you.” He growls playfully.

“It matters not now.” Kylo accepts lovingly. “We had someone worthwhile to overcome our past differences for.” He smiles. Referring to their little dove who lay sleeping.

“That we did.” Draegan grins. And they’re only just all getting started on loving and living around one another.

It made Kylo’s chest swell to think on all the things he had done to see her safe. Guarding her at the ball from the wayward soldier whilst his head had been turned talking to his tenants. Keeping her company in the language of books and tea and kinship and then seizing more than that still, when she realised he’d been there all along.

How he offered to disappear if they didn’t feel the same way. The sacrifice he would have made to see her comfortable.

What they have and share now fills the giddy blissful space under their ribs. Expands so wide it’s all they can breathe. Beyond blood and body this love goes. Wound in every fibre of being.

“Still can’t believe that I get to be a part of this. I’ve had to keep to my silence for so long.” Draegan remarks. A touch of strong love to his voice. Touching Kylo’s hair again. Touch starved. Reminding himself of what this was, and still is like. How much more it can be.

He wakes sometimes - demons don’t need rest the way humans or even vampires do. When he sleeps it is not for rest. And when all is dark on these thawing spring nights he turns to the two in bed next to him, at their peace. And he just basks in that calm for a moment or two. The serenity of the dim red bedchamber filled with Kylo’s snores and Iris twisting and fidgeting in her sleep.

So often she seeks and curls to his warmth and buries her face into his pillow. He always lifts his arms and lets her closer. Even if she did lay on his hair sometimes. He doesn’t mind. It makes him smile. He’s had so long being on his own slumbering upon a cold bed it all still feels a waking dream- a hallucination, that he could have two bed partners near him in the night when all is silent, who love him more than he could ever have figured he deserved.

To burn and ache with love? He finds he can willingly bear the agony of such a consuming inferno.

“You don’t need to be silent now. Nor ever again.” Kylo informs him gently. He smiles as he presses a kiss to his ribs. He gestures across to the bed with a tilt of his head.

And that’s all Kylo needed to say to the man who knows him inside and out.

“I’ll leave her in your very capable courtly hands my love.” Kylo winds his fingers through Draegan’s spare hand. The one that didn’t hold his wineglass. Brought his knuckles to his lips and kissed them as he stared into those blazing blue eyes.

“I’ll take the greatest care.” Draegan promises. And he means it. Of everything Kylo would be leaving behind. Of everything guarded under Ranlor’s roof.

Kylo returns him a dazzling smile. “Think of me in my misery tumbling over the bumpy roads on my way to a very dull meeting and auction.” He whines. Rolling his eyes.

“Why has it come about so suddenly?” Draegan asks. Seeking into business matters. His eyes narrow with curiosity. There was of course other nobles and gentry around these parts money to spare. But Kylo was well known and respected as an affluent Lord. Who would go against him at an auction?

“My solicitor didn’t mention much. Told me it was a new name coming into a title. Probably some jumped up stuffy little prof of a viscount wanting to grab more money for his newly acquired estate. I would see the land restored and look into the probability of farming it if I could.” Kylo tells. Passion in his voice.

He’s been alive too long and seen too much land go to the idle rich who starve those less fortunate than themselves for it. He’s seen so much penury and strife in men and their families ruled under their aristocratic greedy thumbs. He’s seen so much cruelty in land owners. People who take things that could never hope to belong to them. Should never. And it’s not just applicable to plots of land-

“Just be careful.” Draegan asks. Eyes turning sharp and glittering in the low light. Secretive with all the infinite possibilities to his wisened mind. 

Firelight slithers cruelly red-gold off his eyes. Amazing how he could look so powerful as he sits so confidently calm. People sometimes mistook him for a being of little to no power- he would always prove them wrong in the end of all things.

Kylo considers the possibly for a brief second. “I will be.” He promises. He’s not about to go to war over a piece of land but he won’t refuse to stand his ground. That’s the way his stubbornness lies.

Draegan understands how Kylo won’t back down. When issued a challenge, he would never shrink from it. Fear wasn’t a sentiment he held with.

“I’ll find out all tomorrow. I’m certain it’s nothing to fret about. Just someone trying to stick their hand in business that isn’t theirs.” Kylo brushes off. Dancing his big brute fingers across Draegan’s stomach.

“Besides. You have happier things to turn your mind too.” He suggests. Inferring to the time alone he’d have with their little spark.

Draegan’s smile quirks up at the sides again. Unpleasant thoughts and feelings drift away in the face of that romantic hope he cherishes.

“Let me think, how might I help you achieve this courting endeavour-“ Kylo begins. Wondering aloud. He begins rattling off a list-

“Bluebells. Lemon cake. Roast goose with carrots, mashed turnips with butter and chives. Teal blue silk dresses. The rose gardens on a sunny morning. Johnathan Swift Novels. Long baths.” Narrowing his eyes as he tried to remember all her quirks and likes and little luxuries that she so adored.

Draegan intercepts him with some items of his own. Of course he does. Kylo doesn’t know how he does it - he skilfully takes in and learns facets about people like no one else on earth can.

“Rain heavy on the roof of the orangery. Keats poetry. French Bon Bon’s. Frosty autumnal afternoon walks in the woods, pressed leaves and flowers, rosewater and almond cakes, and I believe, Parisienne perfume.” Draegan surmises, finishing the list. So many more things on it to take heed of. Too many more to name.

“You’re well armed.” Kylo grins.

Draegan tips his head back and laughs dearly. He tightens his fingers around Kylo’s hand. Essentially he sat there giving him permission and aiding him in his design of courting her.

“Thank you.” He whispers solemnly. Before he leans forwards and kisses him. And to Kylo? it feels like Draegan pushes every ounce of love he can possess into his kiss.

“You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.” Draegan hums against Kylo’s mouth. Finishing the last of his wine and trying to coax his vampire back into slumber. He nudged his side. Trying to make him get up and take his chest out from between Draegan’s knees.

“Bed.” His demon urges.

“I require my beauty sleep?” Kylo rumbles in offence.

“Precisely.” Comes back a clever smirk. As the last of the wine is sipped and used glasses set aside. Last smears of ruby red sliding down the glass.

Kylo doesn’t let it end there. He steps back and stands and pulls on Draegan’s arm. Hauling his tall body out that chair and into his own. Fronts touching. Chests brushing.

“One more kiss before bed.” Kylo bargains. His mouth so close to Draegan’s neck. Muggy heat sneaking a crawling blush across his collarbone. He can feel the sharp smile resting at the base of his throat.

“You are greedy and shameful.” Draegan tells him as kylo nibbles little bruising kisses down his neck.

“Wonder who I got that from-“ Kylo hums in between smirks and kisses.

Draegan cups his head and leans in to give him what he was after. A firm, loving kiss on the mouth. Lasting only a moment. Sliding clever heat and longing right on into Kylo’s spine.

“Better now?” He hums as they pull away. Draegan waves his hand outwards by his side - a clever trick - all the candles in the room fizzle to smoke.

“Marvellously.” Kylo grins. Draegan can feel his happiness. Even in the darkness as they clamber onto the big red velvet covered bed. Back to curl around their sleeping love before dawn came to take him away.

~

A beautiful dawn it was. Silky clouds in magnificent colours draping across the sky. Spun into frothy saffron edged with darkest sea blue. Bursts of gold caught near where the sun threatens to rise soon. It peeks only just over the far horizon. Kylo will see it rise and shine proud over the landscape as he makes his journey.

Iris and Draegan both rose and dressed to say goodbye.

Iris did wake and rise, washed and dressed, all with a tiny niggling feeling low in the pit of her stomach. It felt grey. Seeing his luggage get taken away to be loaded on the back of the coach. Another pang of grey. It fizzes and burns. Gunpowder in her belly.

It grows more when she sees him stood at the door. He’s gladly giving last minute orders as he pulls on his recently brushed black wool coat - reminders - to Jomar as their Butler stands there and rolls his eyes and tells - begs - Kylo to please leave. He knows what he’s doing.

“You’re going away for one night. You’re not leaving for war for heavens sake.” He defends with a bored expression to his Lordship.

The hungry grey pit reaches its full capacity when she watches him walk out into the dark grey of the courtyard. Sun hasn’t reached here yet. It’s all grey and swimming blue of the night still clinging on. It’ll fade to golden day soon. For now it’s still blue as the sea out here. Orange will soon sneak over the sky and steal it away. A world asleep. Some of the staff aren’t even roused yet. It’s wicked cold too. Iris fancies cold mist will be sliding down from the icy mountain tops.

She didn’t bother overmuch with putting her hair up. Only tied a small frontal section of it back off her face with a jewelled hair ornament. It rests at the back of her long tumbled hair. Growling long and unruly. She put on her quarter sleeved wraparound dress. One that ties at the waist. It was a simple plain blue cotton. Cobalt blue like robin eggs. White-silver ruffled organza trim lay in a decoration around the neck and the arms that ended halfway down her forearm. She pulled the midnight blue shawl, the one stitched with silver flowers that Kylo had brought her as a wedding present, around herself as they walk across the cobbles to the waiting coach.

Erland and Alvis tacked side by side, ready to make the journey. The driver atop the coach ready. Luggage stowed safe on the back. She swallows down the sticky lump in her throat as she watches Kylo stride across to the big box of the high spring coach. His spotless shining black boots, rapping harsh on the tiles, sound clapping back all around them from the fortifying stone walls. Long thick coat laps at his ankles. Hair swaying in the chilling air. Cologne followed him in a gusting trail. Juicy dark fruit on brambles meeting pine.

He opened the coach door and tossed in a small leather pouch of his business papers that he had tucked under his arm. He turns back to see Iris stepping gently across the cobbles in her soft slippers to come and see him off.

Draegan lingers not far behind her. Swathed in a large silver coat over one of his usual brocade silk tunics, a green one today, dark grey breeches and long boots. His hair barely ruffled from his sleep. Sleek down his shoulders and back.

Her arms are crossed around herself and she looks saddened. Keeping the shawl around her elbows and tucked over her shoulders. It was biting cold out here at this time of the morning. Burnt his lungs to breathe it in. He steps back to her. Rapping clack of his boots as he comes to a stop in front of her and she refixed and smoothed down his collar for the umpteenth time. His collar tips coming almost up to his chin. Red wine cravat knotted finely and a pearl tie pin- he made up with Wilton after all.

Her darkly dashing lord. Clad in scarlet and black. All black, except for his waistcoat which was swirled paisley gold and black. Stunning with a white shirt under it. He’s head to toe in money and power. Off to go and see to his estate.

Kylo’s meaty cold hand settles itself kindly on the back of her waist. Reels her closer. He smirks as they come chest to chest. “I’ll be back before you even get a chance to begin missing me.” He assures her.

She spreads both her hands flat on the soft grain of his velvet waistcoat. Tips her head up to meet his whiskey warm eyes. His hand slips from her hip up to cradle her face. “I miss you when you’re in the other room.” She assures him.

This makes him smile. Of course it does.

He leans down and slowly nuzzles his big soft lips to hers. Taking a kiss of her so she might feel him when he’s not here. The press and the feeling of his lips may linger about her body long after his coach disappears down the drive.

She leans up on tiptoes and hooks her hand to the back of his neck and shoulder to deepen the delicious kiss for just one second longer. Kylo’s smile breaks their embrace apart. He slants his cold nose against her cheek for a moment. Smiling at her and drowning her in warm love from his dark eyes. “That should keep me warm tonight in my lonely cold bed.” He smiles.

“Travel carefully, and come home safe.” She urges, wearing a little frown on her brow. He grips her chin in his cold leather gloves. Kisses that crinkle of skin until it goes away and her beaming smile comes.

“I will, my dove.” He promises. “I won’t talk to anyone remotely strange and I’ll look both ways before crossing the road.” He japes with a wink. Cupping her round warm thigh through her dress and kissing her lips again. Trying to inject some levity into his parting. Ease her worries.

Draegan comes slowly to a stop behind Iris. Having given the married couple their embracing moment alone. His coat trailed fine rasping silk along the cobbles. Kylo smiles over her shoulder at him.

“I entrust her care entirely over to you. Look after her in my absence.” Kylo smirks at him. Looking lovingly at his wife. He winks at her too. Iris slips her hands off his chest. He mourns and aches after the touch already.

“Of course.” Draegan offers back. Kylo turns his eyes up to the tall demon lingering behind her. The early morning air combing cold through his fine hair. Lifting strands of it. Blowing swirls of jasmine scent into his path. Drifting on the gentle stir of the wind.

He’ll miss it. Both of them. When he sleeps at night their perfume is all he can smell and it comforts him. He knows wherever he lays his head tonight, the pillow will smell of laundered cotton and nothing more. And that would hurt him a little. The absence-

As no one was around, well, except for Jomar and Ramsey sat atop the coach but they didn’t count, Kylo allows himself a small liberty. Who cares if people talk, they do little else-

He steps up to Draegan and gently moves his head close to give him a parting kiss too. Hand slipping to his and holding him as the kiss lasts. He feels how it makes his own cheeks blush as he does it. Blood filling them. When he pulls back those Eden eyes and a cleverly soft smile is beaming love at him.

Tectonic measurements of love blazes here between their looks and touches. Ripe with it and the slight sting of sadness that came with a goodbye.

He squeezed back the hand that held his own. And for a second they hold, before Kylo drags himself away. Backs off and comes to stand an even distance away from the both of his loves.

Out the corner of his eyes, Kylo spots Jomar in the doorway, folding his hands in front of him and raising his black brows almost under his Dastar, with an impressed smile. An all too superior and smug one for his liking.

Somehow the notion of Jomar’s pleasure makes Kylo’s annoyance come forth-

“Shut up, Jomar.” Kylo barks irritably as he turns around and discounts his butlers smug look. 

“You don’t pay me enough for that.” Jomar shot back. Rapier wit as sharp as ever. 

Kylo rolls his eyes and growls as he grabs a hold of the door handle to the coach and swings himself up to be seated inside it.

It creaks and rocks on its springs as he gets comfortable inside. Shutting the door and latching it. Rapping the roof three times to signal he was ready.

Iris snatched one more glimpse of him before the driver called the horses on and the coach rocked away. Lurching off on its intended journey. She watches through the cold pane of glass until the sight of his handsome face and blazing eyes is nothing but a blur. He smiles at them.

All she sees now is the fine night black of the carriage as it fades from view. Gold sun bouncing off the roof as it sidles away down the rampart bridge with a tirade of hooves and the roar of the wheels.

Iris stands and watches until she can’t hear or see the coach anymore. Nor the man inside it, being whisked away to the opposite side of Germany.

Draegan stays with her as she stands. Her echoing for its dead counterpart within Kylo. He stands and he watches with her. A tall pale marble column by her side.

This is the first time her and Kylo will have been truly apart since they married. This sad fact of such a meagre parting wails dreadfully in her unquieted chest. Sinks her heart a little.

He dares to reach across to tangle their fingers together where they are stood. For a moment they merely linger before their hands touch. Iris let’s her fingers skim and curl around his. Knotting their palms as one.

“I’ll miss him too.” He adds quietly as they watch dawn set the wood ablaze in shimmering orange. The mist does come slithering down from the mountains. Soaks the bottom of the trees. They’re swimming in it. In the wisp white mist that the warm flaming sun will soon chase away

Iris sways herself to lean closer to him. Partaking in some of his towering strength. Her side brushes into him as she tips to him and lets his body hold her. Hands entwined by their touching sides. She lays her head on his upper arm. Hair ruffling on the wind and sending notes of her perfume whirling up for him to detect.

“I know I can’t replace him. I would never replace him. Not in his stead either. But I vow myself to your safety.” He pledges to her. His words come solemn and full of meaning as they watch the sky bruise into colour together. She knows he means it and she never doubted for a second.

She smiles where her head sags back onto him. “I do feel safe with you.” She twisted to look back up at him. Meets those obliterating eyes that she loves so much. The ones that carve paths along her skin whenever he looks at her.

“Draegan, even when I didn’t know the full extent of you, I somehow always felt safe being around you. It was only Kylo’s warnings of your character that rather set me on edge.” She laughs a little remarking on a time she ever felt wary of him.

She turns to face him as she talks. Idly splays her fingers over the ends of his satin hair that hung down over his shoulders and chest. Tucking herself into his front. Stroking down the ends of his soft hair. Silk couldn’t even dare compare to its softness-

“He was right to warn you of my dangers.” He lowers his lips to her brow kisses the side of her temple. That kiss spoke leagues of his affection for her. It told her how much he would keep her in safety. It makes her smile.

The kiss said everything; the soft ones he pressed to her skin in calm loving moments; _but_ _you need never be afraid of me._

“If there were any nerves around you in the beginning. Please do be informed, it’s because I found you terribly enchanting.” She hears the rumble of a soft laugh that ripples through his chest.

“That I admit, I did detect. Is it terribly self centred of me to say I adore hearing you confess to it.” He smiles sharply. She turns her head up and catches the corner of his wide grin.

“I’m happy to pay you compliments my dear. Do tell me what you’re most obliged to hear...” She seeks. Laughter woven through her words as she hangs off his arm.

“Well. Let me think a while- attend to my vanity.” He jests. As they turn arm in arm and make their way back to the grand stairs leading up to the door. Jomar waits there still lurking on the doormat. Smiling at the sight of his Lady and Lord Verros in such close intimate conversation.

She wraps her arm up in his. Coils her arm in-between his own to better hold his hand as they walk along. Silk brushing her cheek before she raises her head and looks up at the clear dawn sky. “Now I’ve got an early start, I suppose I had better make a wise occupation of it.” She figured aloud.

“Anything I can offer my assistance in?” Draegan asks.

“I’m to go and pick some roses from the gardens.” She pauses and turns to him. “If you’re agreeable to join me?” She adds, smiling sweetly.

“I am excessively fond of a stroll through a rose garden.” He smiles back at her. His smile does something warm and instantly bolting to her belly. She returns the warmth of his smile in the gladness of hers. He holds her hand as they come up the tall cold steps. Into the house out the dimming blue rush of dawn.

When they come to the top of the cream-grey stone steps, Jomar is waiting patiently at the doorcase for the pair of them. Hands folded around his back. Today’s Dastar is a saffron gold, his coat the deepest shade of navy linen. Midnight blue ink. His smile; cunning and immensely proud.

“My Lady.” He greets. Looking suspiciously pleased. “Any particular care for your luncheon today? I thought an elegant tea for two might serve well? Possibly in the orangery?” He encourages with great vigour. He also twists round and gathers some items off the side table inside the door.

“And If I may, I took the liberty of collecting these for you.” He passes over a wooden trug. The flat wide one she always used for collecting her blooms. A pair of wrought iron botanical scissors lay in the bottom. Rattling around as he passes her over the basket.

“Thank you Jomar.” Iris smiles with a blush staining her cheeks. “Me and Lord Verros shall be in the rose gardens for a while. Do please come and call me if I’m needed.” She asks. Slipping the trug to rest in the crook of her arm.

“Certainly. Though I fear it’s a quiet day so you shall remain undisturbed. I will now go and see to ordering some excellent rare fillets of beef for when his Lordship comes home. And I know there’s some rather special bottles of 1774 Vueve Clicquot languishing somewhere in the cellars. I shall consult the wine ledger this very afternoon.” He winks to his Lady.

“Thank you Jomar. You are dismissed.” Iris nods with a calm grin. He bows his head at them both and smiles wide as he walks off down the kitchens to the corridors with a certain spring in his step.

Iris can scarcely avoid Draegans smile as they both around to intend in the opposite direction.

“I think he’s been at the morning nips of Cook’s sherry again.” Iris smiles amused as they come up more stairs. Draegan smile curls in that knowing way of his.

“He was elated to see you marry Kylo. I believe he is now brimming with joy to see us three all happy. I know those two do scrap like wolves but they are ultimately devoted to each other as dear friends.” He presumed.

Iris knows this well. She thought her and Kylo would be the ones bickering and nagging each other when she thought of what their married life would be like. Only she’s been proven wrong- the only one who nags at Kylo, and quite rightly, is their impertinent and excellently neat Butler. This does amuse her so.

“ _About bloody time,_ was his precise thought I believe.” Draegan relays across to her.

“Well-“ Iris blushes. “The Butler is supposed to know of everything that occurs under his roof.” She confirms.

They walk along the hallway, and up around the outer corridor to come to the side of the castle where the rose gardens stood. There were gardens surrounding three sides of the castle. The front side was the rampart bridge. To the back of it the land borders between the woods and the mountain, and the other sides were where the lush gardens sat. The tea rose garden stood on a vast valley near the rampart bridge. Overlooking the valley of the woods below. A beautiful woodland and garden essence about it.

They come out the wall of glass windows and the big terrace door, and head down the sloping path which curved around the outer wall of the castle to the right. The left took them down into the woods where the valley ended. Tumbling into the forest floor.

They round the corner that’s not yet under the golden watch of an unfolding sun, and a wall of pure rose scent hits them like a solid smack as they walk along the dew crusted grass. Beaded with cold and wet and crunching underfoot.

Cold dewy dawn air mingled with roses ripening in the just glowing sun. Such a harmonious scent when wrapped up in all this landscape. Nature and birdsong chitters and chirps around them. The wind shivering on the pines. Rattling every needle. Clashing together. Iris admires how the blooms are flourishing under this new bright spell of spring Ranlor is enjoying. Some are blooming some have yet too. Growing heavy and fat and full of scent. Silky petals unfolding. The white of them practically searing in the half blue dawn.

They come onto a white single path that leads them on through the large beds of the plants. It took them under wire arches twined and dripping with trailing roses vines, and led them to a Grecian temple gazebo. Perched on the midst of the flower beds, rising out the roses. A grand view of the wall of ballroom windows just up above them. A view shes only seen set under thick thick snow thus far. It looks beautiful with the blanket of winter having thawed away.

They walk along with their shoes crunching shifting on the gravel paths. Iris sees sadly how some of the rose bushes hadn’t sprung with their floral beauty yet. Still withered and bare. It saddens her to see that some of the plants hadn’t survived the cruel frost.

She stops and attends to one particularly dry and sad looking rose bush. Dropping and brittle brown. All life seemed now extinct. Such a shame.

“Casualties of the harsh cold.” He comments as seriously as she felt it.

“The perils of this climate and altitude I fear. It does them little good.” She supposed. Feeling glum for the beautiful things.

Draegan reached out and touched one of the dead stalks with his thumb. Rubbed across the frail little dead bud. Slowly took his hand away.

“Watch, little spark.” He nods towards the rose bush.

Iris watches as nothing happens but the bud shivering on the slight wind. And then it’s moving. Shuddering as the petals suddenly revitalised. Curling up and opening outwards. Spreading and blooming it’s spotless white petals.

She gapes a smile; all the dead roses on the bed before them start to shift and quiver. All the vines springing up with new life. He chuckles and the sound of it warms her ear to hear it. His hand touches to her lower back through her shawl and dress.

She turns back to him. Smile still unbelieving. Questions on the tip of her tongue. “How?” She seeks.

Draegan answers her simply. Scanning along the rest of the roses.

“There is no death without life.” He explains. Studiously as ever.

“The two sustain each other a great deal more than people tend to realise.” He confirms ominously. Turning away he gives her the corner of a wise look and a sharp smirk.

Iris never knew which of the greater halves ruled him; the half from heaven or the half from hell. He was born of both. She finds it enchanting that the man who looks like blue daylight and peace is also a harbinger of war and death.

He can feel her curiosity ebbing out of her. An enigma he will always be to her, endearingly so- maybe she’s only scratched the surface of him. Maybe she’ll see more in the time together they have to come. Maybe she’ll never see more of him. There’s no way of knowing which way it will fall. She’s contented with their pace of now. Kinship and romance.

She trims a few of the roses that are threatening to go over. He walks across the dewy grass. Brushing along the tails of his coat as he crosses to the gazebo nearby. Admiring the view.

When she’s finished with laying a few of her roses in the basket, she climbs up the steps to the temple to join him. Cold musty air swirling about them. Fogging the view of the valley of the forest below. Only the heavy tips of the black pine trees stir the fog like arrow heads. The air is so biting Iris has to pull her shawl about herself tighter as they come to a stop under the shade of the open sided gazebo.

The dome of the roof is entirely a cloud of green vines and white roses that cascade down the open sides and curl around the crackled white marble columns. The floor is crusted with moss between the shining white tiles.

Cold breezes shudder through the open space as they stand and leans against one of the pillars, placing her trug on the marble railing as she cups one of the white roses from the bushes that swarms and swallows around the edges of the gazebo. She leans down and brings her face to the sweet flower. Close of her eyes and drowning in the sickly floral aroma it offered.

Draegan leans on the pillar opposite the one where she’s stood. The gazebo wasn’t large but somehow he made it feel enclosed and small. Especially with the way he watches her admire the flowers. She can feel the drag of his eyes admiring her. Slipping along the back of her neck. Even through the tangled mess of her hair. She fancies she can feel it.

“I dearly remember the last walk through rose gardens we took together. At Château Donnet.” He speaks up. Idly coming closer. Calm and graceful as water.

His hand slides close to where hers is curled over the carved marble railing. Their little fingers brush. Side by side. She turns back from where she was facing, looking outwards from the temple over the woods. She slowly inches her fingers over to his. Stroking at his knuckle and the small silver ring with a dull white stone that sat there.

She recalls his memory of their shared time together, perfectly. It brings a delightful new touch of pink to her cheeks.

“I remember it too. Fondly.” Iris tells him gently. Smile not leaving her lips.

He reaches across and places his hand across her own. Dwarfing her. Raising his hand to her lips and laying a kiss upon it. Thumb rubbing at her knuckles afterwards. Where he stood now, she turned to him. They almost slotted together. Where he stands towering over and she looks up at him with the cold column of marble at her back.

“The only thing I wished when I stepped under that gazebo in Célines gardens was that you were the woman in front of me. Angling for a kiss.” He says.

She recalls the vivacious french girls who flocked madly to him when they went to Célines for tea. They’d been perched dangerously on the verge of a kiss in the rose gardens when one of them looped her arm through his and led him away. Batting her lashes at him like a true winsome coquette.

Iris felt stung by it. A stupid ugly knot of an emotion but that’s what she felt. Jealousy she later realised. For the women who received his romantic attentions. She felt absolutely wretched for it. To feel such attraction. He tilts his head and softly brushes his fingertips gently up her cheek. Feeling the blush beat hot blood out beneath his fingertips. Her eyes almost close in sheer bliss.

“I know it’s a different gazebo in an entirely different garden, but you could kiss me under here if it helps absolve your agonies.” She invites with a playful smile.

“I think I might just have too.” He jests back to her.

Where his hand cups her neck he brings their lips warmly together. He moves to her like silk and she melts for this demon. She let the power of his touch shimmer through her body. It felt bright and sharp. Powerfully catching on every nerve like some bursting fissure of flame.

She reaches up and cups his arm where he holds her face. Slides his fingers under her neck. Deepening their touch. His wants didn’t go unrequited.

Those searing blue eyes regard her with such wholesome devotion it’s enough to make her knees tremble. They stay in their embrace a moment longer. Entwined in things that could now be joyfully expressed. They’ve spent so long being apart and wishing they could hold the other closer. To realise that with each touch and each kiss is some new kind of heaven upon them both.

His thumb finds her cheekbone and softly strokes it. Her hand curls into the stiff satin of his coat. Clutching at his arm.

A sharp intake of breath is yanked right out of her when he slithers one hand across her lower back. Pulling her right to him. Tightly crushed to his chest. Just enough force to make her heart swoon in her chest. He takes her other hand and places it on his chest. Showing her she could touch him.

Make her feel an ounce of the pleasure she always gives to him, merely by being near. Accepting him the way she does.

“Turn around-“ He whispers softly when they break apart after a languid long moment.

He takes the dear hand she placed on his chest. Holds it gently as she twists back around, facing out over the woods. Across the valley, with the mountain slanting down the horizon in the distance. She sees instantly why he bade her to turn around. Another soft gasp rips from out her mouth.

“ _Oh.”_

Where they were stood, her back to his chest, she sees that they were perfectly placed to see the sunrise. His hands clutching hers to keep her warm as they watch the day dawn.

So much red gold. The mist is suddenly kissed orange as the sun starts to spear over the landscape. Gold starts to swim through the cold air and set this side of the pearl coloured castle walls a soft peach. Everything had gold thrown upon it. Drowning in the luxury haze of it. The tips of the trees. The garden shimmers like amber is beaded on every blade of grass. The roses scent blooms sweeter with the gift of the nourishing sun. She stands and lets her mind cast itself adrift as she watches the most beautiful sunrise she’s ever seen.

She’s seen a lot of beautiful sights in her life. But somehow, surrounded by roses in the stinging blue cold, with him at her back as they share watching a most glorious sunrise is nothing short of bliss.

His thumb gently strokes over her hand. Along the ridge of her knuckles. The sun climbs higher across the sky. Casting this whole cold landscape a shimmering cornelian orange. Iris can feel the smile on her lips. Such breath stealing beauty.

“That’s utterly beautiful.” She says softly. Any louder tone of voice seemed madness in this calm quiet. With the birds singing and the roses ruffling on a breeze that’s carved around them.

“I’ve always found the beauty of sunrises can rarely be paralleled.” He agrees. She can tell his eyes are still fixed on the intense amber-gold of the horizon too.

She lays her back into his chest. Leaning on him so slightly and laying her hands over his. He loops her in a hug and crosses his hands to knot together at her stomach. Her hands were slightly cold and his were so fiery and lush with warmth. He curls his big fingers around her hands to better keep them warmed.

“Your hands are cold, spark.” He comments as she entwined her fingers more so with his.

“Your hands are always warm.” She comments. He sets himself beside her, leaning against the railing and brings her hand to his face again. Kisses her knuckles with his warm soft lips. Gold morning sunshine and warm gentle kisses. She’s so spoiled with love, that she’ll expect nothing less when starting a day from now on- handsome kisses, rose petals and aching full with heady love of him.

It’s not just the beauty of the sunshine that gets her. He looks rather glorious too. His hair turned to a white gold in the yellow tinted light. Kissing a soft peach essence along his creamy skin and his eyes are so fantastic with brightness. Twin discs of a blue oasis. Consumed with love.

He stays holding her hands. Looking down where they are joined. The comparisons between their differences makes him smile. Makes something protective twang in his chest.

Iris remarks to herself now noble and chivalrous he can be. Like some man of old. Removed from another time and transplanted here. One shes only read about in Arthurian legends. There isn’t room for anything else in her quivering heart, aside from joy, and how much she’s so taken with his gentlemanly behaviour.

Not that she expected anything less. But she’d rather thought that demons would have been salacious wicked creatures when they want to be seductive. She thought that when Kylo first spoke of him. She didn’t know what wonderful creature awaited her knowledge then; she does now.

She knows the times he’s heralded into and from will have its strong impact on how he treats others. Especially women. He talks and moves with such reverence and respect of the supposed fairer sex.

“Whilst we’re blessed to have such a moment alone, It seems like the perfect time for me to declare my intentions toward you. In case you were wondering about what will happen...” Draegan pipes up as he strokes her hands and smiles gently at her.

“Intentions?” Iris repeats with curious respect.

“My intentions to court you.” He makes plain.

Iris never knew she was such a fickle creature as to swoon and weaken from a man’s words; but this is no mere man, and _good lord,_ how she does weaken at the knees. She’s glad the railing behind her gives her some semblance of strength to remain upright.

“I never had the luxury of such an option with Kylo. If I had, I would’ve done the same. I was left only with the choice to save him. And I don’t want it to appear as though my one goal was to come here, and seduce you.” He says with his tongue curling around the word ‘ _seduce_.’ Matter of fact his sensual tone makes her gulp.

He steps just that fraction closer. She’s pressed against the marble railing looking up at this divine creature. Her breath skips and stutters as he draws in. His hands on the railing either side of her. She is captivated by his towering body being so close.

“I never doubted your intentions toward me were anything less than honourable.” She decides. Speaking the truth.

“Good.” He tells. “Because I’m not the type to lift your skirts and take you right here in these exquisite rose gardens.” He explains. His voice dropping a few octaves enough to make her shiver.

He holds her suddenly closer. Tighter. Hands slipping down to hold the back of her hips.

“No matter how much I am tempted.”

A lethal flirty grin is shot pearly white and sharp at her. Her thighs clenched. Kylo’s strength was indomitable. Draegan’s was just as deliciously formidable.

Head swiftly emptied of all thoughts. His hips almost bracketing to hers. Enough to get her insides turning into something molten not too far removed from the molten metal gold of the sunrise that now flushed over them. Peeking between the rose vines where it could. Fluttering over them in rich drips.

He leans in casually slow to press another kiss to her lips. Deepening it to obliterating maddening degrees when he slipped his hand up her back. Tucked her close and gave her close that almost stopped her heart and relocated all hot hot blood in her upper half scorching to her cheeks.

Her body arches to his. She can’t help it. Politesse is all but gone. Only animosity and addictive kisses remain. She claws her fingers at his shoulders. Slipping on on the sleek grain of his brocade silk. She bunches it under her fingers. His hands linger flat in the cradle of her lower back. Folds of her cotton dress ruched between his fingers.

When they do reluctantly break to share air, it’s each other’s they’re sharing. Muggy hot blazing into spit wet rosy lips. Cheeks hotter than flame. Eyes dazed and foggy with lust. Her neck is pink and flushed where one of his hands had slid to cup her there. Spreading over her ear and feeling how she pinkens. Skin bursting with love and lust in equal harmony.

“Oh, spark.” He sighs. The way his voice is a broken husk makes Iris cling into his coat. Her fingers so sharp in it she fancies she’d rip holes in it soon. His expression looks like he’s in agony- only she knows how untrue that is. She can feel the emotion seeping off him like cold sharp pattering rainfall.

She no longer wants to hide anything about what she feels for Draegan. And he feels that so deeply. A dagger struck, studded right to the very centre of his being. And the agony is akin to something heavenly. Something that burns and malformed like holy fire.

And there, in the bright gold of a new dawn. She doesn’t have to hide any longer either. Her fingers tangled in his long icy hair and desperate bodies entwined in new passion and embraces, that felt truly long awaited and much rewarded.

~


	40. Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, stars very much a theme in this chapter ✨🌟⭐️💫🌙 Did I overdo it? Possibly- but sweet lord I hereby decree this absolutely tooth rotting stuff- brush floss and please remember to see your dentist folks. 
> 
> Also dubious use of science and stargazing here- I’m the farthest thing from an expert on I just use my imagination backed up with pretty mild fact-
> 
> Also this is a TUNNNEE- I listened to this on repeat writing this chapter. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WWevUuJtQ

Iris watched the gold, such warm gold, of candlelight bump and shift down the rocky exposed stone of the castle walls from where she sat in her bath. Watching her small glimpse of the setting evening plunging into the heavy bruise of night darkening the sky.

She reckons there will be stars out tonight. Out there in the heavens shimmering their speckled light to cast over the earth. Sparkling and delightful in the dominant crushing black. Nestled and scattered next to the moons pearl brilliancy.

She watches it from her current spot in the warm lap of her bath. Rubbing some oaty lavender soap up her arms and legs. The rough grain of the dried petals embedded in the silky cake of soap scrubs hard at her skin. Tinting it a fierce red.

She runs that milky sudsy scent all over her neck and collarbones. Over her breasts and rubbing loveless motions over her shoulders and scooping under the wet bunched hair at back of her neck.

She had swept her hair up in the least elegant arrangement. Tied back with an old beige piece of muslin. Taming back her locks that Rose had helped her dry and brush earlier. Rubbing some scented oil that smelt like Moroccan roses and verdant bright green into the strands and combing it gently to dry out. She shifted her legs in the lukewarm water. It’s rapid cooling urged her to leave it soon and get dressed for dinner.

Running the soap over her arms for the final time, a sound beyond the closed doorway captures her attention. She hears the bedroom door creak, the telltale whine of it, and Rose addressing someone. The soft muffling of her silvery voice. Formal and clear.

Iris turns her head back to the direction of the door and listens through the din of splashing water. She stills herself so she can hear. One hand hooked over the cold edge of the bath. She turns back feeling hair caught sticky wet trailing down the back of her neck.

She can definitely hear the low rumbling dulcet of a man’s voice behind the door. And Rose speaking again. And then a few seconds of silence as the whine of the door heralding it’s being open and closed again. The finality of the latch clicking.

Iris rises up out her bath, water rushing off her, and reaches for the large flannel to dry herself with. Stepping onto the dry cotton mat she lets the water drip off her as she scrubs herself. Going for her gown Rose had left warming on the rack by the fire. It sticks a little when she pulls it across her undried back. But she knots the tie around her waist and relents.

She pushes open the door to the dim red bedchamber and the cold air greets her, savagely raising goosebumps. Whirling up her skirts as she entered. She crosses her arms around her middle.

She smiled to herself in plentiful thought as she padded across the dim bedroom. Candlelight burning red gold, blood and old coins, in flamed spots on the wall from the gold candlesticks dotted around. Soft warm gold permeates the air in here too. The mood is cosy. At night when all the candles were lit, Iris fancies that this place looks as magical as she always envisioned a castle to be.

The deep romantic red of the bed and the roaring fire set. It truly looks as opulent and elegant. Caravaggio darks and comforting warm colours. The way the soft of the mahogany carved bed shines with refractions of fire, the wainscotted walls dance merry with the wavering candles highlighted on them.

Rose was spreading out an option of pressed dresses on the neatly laid bed. Her black skirts sweeping the floor. Hair always arranged in a silky smooth coiffure. She was so artful with hair. Ruthlessly well dressed and always looking so put together. Nary a hair out of place. And in the dark her colouring looked as jet black as her soot coloured dress.

“My Lady.” Rose turns around and bows her head at Iris. Her smile was absolutely cunning. Brightly pleased.

Iris could dissect that grin of hers by now. The way her prettily - just rouged enough cheeks - pulled into a pretty straight smile. Teeth as rare and white as pearls.

“Out with it.” Iris seeks. A curious yet confused smile stays on her lips. She has a canny feeling who the male intruder was not too long ago. It certainly wasn’t Jomar. She can’t smell the trail of his orange blossom cologne and the essence of mango oil he used on his goatee. That was the first giveaway.

Rose sashayed over to the vanity table. Whereupon Iris spied a walnut flat box she’d never laid eyes on before. She held her skirts up as she giddily crossed back over with the box in her hands.

“Lord Verros left this for you. I think he’s hoping you’ll wear it to dinner.” She seeks with a fantastic grin. Girly excitement pouring off her in waves.

“Between him and Kylo I don’t half wonder if they have monopolies on all the jewels in Bavaria.” Iris jests.

“Can we open it? Oh _Please, ma Cherie?_ ” Rose beams.

How could she resist such a happy plea? Iris nods a pleased of course.

She all too eagerly unclasped the little brass ornament latch and slowly eased the lid open to reveal something that made her eyes bug out her head. Pure diamonds and silver tear bright at her eyes. Both ladies jaws dropped.

It was a silver woven wreath of a necklace. Great big silver stars branching off of it. Smaller ones knotted in the stars tips. A huge twist of diamonds and stars. Framed beautifully together where it lay on the velvet black lined box.

“There’s a note too.” Rose infers. Biting down her lower lip with a smile as she hands over Iris a small enfold of paper. Jasmine and lemons lingers on its cloth. As if writ on there like the ink containing the message.

She unfolds it and reads. “ _You already had flowers. But the stars weren’t beyond my reach to gift. I hope you enjoy them-“_ Iris smiles. Nice as poetry could be, she’s glad he didn’t resort to penning her heart-felt verses. Sometimes simplicity was far more effective.

His note made her stomach cloud with heady warmth. Her cheeks felt hot and it’s nothing to do with her bath. She turns to where Rose is still holding the box out to her. Iris shows her the missive.

“I like a man who doesn’t mince his words.” Rose smiles in a mightily smug manner. “And thank god he is sensible enough not to write you poetry, Cherie. It can be so drab-“ She insists. Rolling her pretty brown eyes over in her head like walnut marbles.

“I sense a story lingering behind those words. Rose.” Iris suspects, shooting her maid a whip-smart look. And a clever smile. Some far off paramour. Maybe back in her time in Paris working for a rich widow before coming here.

“He was an apprentice to a painter. It was dreadful.” Rose grimaces in memory. Iris tried to fight off a laugh.

“Didn’t possess a gift for writing verses then?” Iris asks in irony.

“He compared my eyes to mud.” Rose said “ _mud_.” She repeated lowly with annoyance hemming in her tone. Iris grimaced with humour.

They both turn to look back at the box held between them. “You get the stars. I get the mud. C’est la vie.” Her maid jests with good sport at her love life.

“It is a very stunning piece-“ Iris insists. It looks nearly too fine to touch. She softly dared to drape a fingertip over the star that sat in the middle of the wreath. She fancied it would brush her collarbone when she puts it on.

“Which dress do you think, Cherie?” Rose asks. Iris looked to the gowns that lay sprawled and pressed across the bedcovers. There was a beautiful cream gauze, soft as sand, layered over white satin. A sky blue silk taffeta trimmed with stiff ivory lace to the neck and sleeves. A heavy and opulent blood-orange gown of light muslin is the final choice.

Rose places the necklace down on the bed. Letting it linger near the gowns to see what suited best. “This one-“ Rose exclaimed triumphantly. Lifting the first cream coloured dress up. Iris smiles. She agreed.

Rose had her things ready. Stockings chemise and stays all tied tight and buttoned up. Iris sits at her vanity after Rose slips the dress over her head and fastens it at the back. Being sure to pinch the drawstrings of the back of the neckline in very tightly. So much that it rasps a breath right out of Iris’ chest. She nearly wheezes with the motion.

“Beauty is pain.” Rose pointed out unhelpfully with an impish smile. Iris feared her breasts would clasp her chin if she made it any the tighter.

Rose sits her down and attended to her hair next. With the gown laced, her quick maid made short work of Iris’ long locks. Twisting and tugging and sliding in pins to keep the curls where they needed to be. Her hair was much too thick to attempt the more modern and time consuming romantic coils framing her face.

She settled for fewer simple braids and twisted the long locks back to a simple gathered bun. With a few last jewelled pearl pin and a comb slid into the coiffure, Rose declared she was ready.

Not before she’d unlatched the wreath of stars and strung them around Iris’ neck as she sat at her vanity table. Watching the diamonds glimmer and wink in the mirror with the way her breathing disturbed the way the jewels laid.

Rose smiles as she secured the clasp and places her hands on Iris’ shoulders. “Will that do? My Lady.” She asks with a proud and easy grin.

Iris nods. Her stomach suddenly a whole sinking pit of nerves. “Thankyou Rose. You are dismissed, I shall not need you again tonight.” Iris smiles kindly.

“Enjoy your dinner, Cherie.” Rose hopes. Folding the laundry and the unused dresses over her arms and calmly walks to the door.

Iris spins around in her sit to fasten her slippers on her feet. Gathering her skirts out the way and addressing her finishing touches of dripping some perfume on her wrists and at her neck. Some on her breastbone too. She looks at her reflection in the mirror as she finishes readying herself.

She’s never looked in the mirror to watch the stars before.

Crossing to the door she takes a deep breath, halted at the door-case with her hand on the doorknob. She chews nervously on the inside of her lower lip. She’s amazed to find butterflies are squirming and kicking for attention in her stomach. She quells them down into quiet.

She opens the door with a newfound bravery and walks out into the darkened castle halls. The way had been left lit for her with gold beeswax candles in their gold ornate holders perched on the walls. What darkness the candles doesn’t light, the moon and the stars try to.

Some too are perched on stone cold ledges at the wall of stars beyond the glass of the arched windows. She holds her skirts as she walks down the great marble staircase. Steps clapping all around her from the soft hit of her slippers on them.

She comes through the halls. Bidding goodnight to some of the hall boys and footmen she passes. Heading up for an early night no doubt. With Kylo away, their duties are lessened. Perhaps they have a night off to walk into the nearby village to a tavern to seek some beer, or ale, and a platter of carved roast capon for a ha’penny, and a well deserved respite.

She comes through the end of the ballroom. The fire is lit and roaring in the creamy stone hearth. Shining off the grand floor. Haze of it beating up into the patterned tiles. The gigantic version of Kylo’s house crest that heralds its proud coat of arms on the dancefloor. Iris admires it as she walks past. Through the anteroom she heads and comes to a stop at the dining room doors which were pulled closed. Where a certain Butler happens to be lurking.

“Susandhya.” He tucks his hands behind his back and bows his head to his Lady. Wishing her a good evening in his native tongue.

“Mera dost.” Iris smiles her replies. Ravi had taught her the Hindi phrase of ‘ _my friend’_ in exchange for her secretly letting him handling one of the castles swords - scabbard on - for precisely two minutes.

“He said he’d been teaching you.” Jomar grins nicely in his cinnamon honey soothing voice. Rife with excitement. Eyes glittering with rusty brown warmth. He reaches behind himself to place his hand on the golden door handle.

“He tries valiantly. I’m afraid my pronunciation still has some way yet to go.” She promises to Jomar with an honest grin. Her shoulders shake with meagre mirth as she talks. Laughter touching light on her voice.

Ravi was ecstatic to find out that Draegan was to be staying at Ranlor. Kylo had broken the news to the boy, who when he next saw him, he ran full pelt and threw his arms around the hips and hugged the damnation out of his long legs. Draegan held his back and chuckled. Smile so wide and mirthful. Glad to see his decision to say was widely revered as a joyful one. Ravi rambled on and on about all the things Draegan could teach him.

His lessons could continue with a vengeance-

After their sunrise in the rose gardens this morning, Iris and Draegan went their separate ways when they got back into the house. Draegan went to get some rest before his lesson with Ravi later on. Iris went to go and arrange her flowers and find something to occupy her.

A few letters had captivated her attention for a short while. She sat in her study and attended to them but, truly she was aching for some company to take her mind off bland matters of duty.

She goes in search of it. And it doesn’t take long to find. In the library come schoolroom - an unused parlour - she finds one certain student and one demon mid-way through their lessons. Today it was English.

She bought a trug full of flowers and a huge ornamental greek style vase to organise for in here. Sweet and sickly green perfume of them trails behind her like a too long coat.

She’s putting the snipped blooms into a crackled white China vase, with a blue Grecian pattern. Her favourite. A bright spot to keep Ravi’s school room looking warm and lived in. She’s got a whole bunch of sweet peas, bluebells, white roses and some long stems of creamy gladiolus.

She’s stood across the room stood at the table as Draegan gets Ravi reading some Keats poetry, Ivanhoe the book by Walter Scott was poised next. But the handsome lull of Draegan reading Keats aloud to Ravi was akin to listening to honey. Soft and hypnotic in that dulcet commanding baritone of his.

Though his voice was lighter than her husband’s, the tenderness of it still melted and fussed in her stomach.

She smiles when Draegan read aloud from the book to Ravi who was struggling with understand the poetry’s meaning. Dragean shows him. The way he speaks made Iris feel like she could feel the blood swirling molten heat at the base of her throat. She continues sliding her flowers into the vase under the line of the water. His voice humming in her ears like wine and honey, and fine spices.

When she looks up he’s spearing his eyes directly into her. Blue lances that tear right into her heart. Studded it’s influence in deep as he smiles, reading aloud all the while. Watching her whilst her fingers handle the delicate little stems of sweet peas. She smiles back. She’s not afraid of this anymore. Their love. This sweetly delicious feeling he gives her.

“O, for some sunny spell, to dissipate the shadows of this hell. Say they are gone, — with the new dawning light, Steps forth my lady bright.” He turned the page and broke the spell of his gazing on her.

Ravi cocked his head and looked between them. Perhaps cottoning onto more than what was wordlessly being said. Draegan pulled him back into the poem to coerce him into taking notes.

Iris sinks back into the present as Jomar gives her a compliment;

“He admires you very much my lady. And your lessons with him are most instructive to his education.” Jomar thanks her.

“I don’t hold a candle to Draegan’s teachings I’m afraid. I’m the amateur in that occasion.” She offers up.

“Hardly.” Jomar insists. Walking the door open with his back to it. Shoving her the chiaroscuro orange, gold and dark of the big dining room. Where her dining companion awaited.

He’d changed for dinner too. As was fashionable with most upper echelons of this era’s society. Although they’ve made do without it some nights. They’ve had informal dinners together, and dined in the bedchamber, lounging and eating breads and cheeses and lazily sipping down plenty of dark plum wine.

A red brocade coat frames his magnificent upper half. Scarlet-berry red. Eschewing his usual colours, he wore long black boots and black breeches instead. And he was lighting the silver candlesticks that stood crowning their proud dinner service laid out on the table. Hair as floaty and silky as ever. His piercing eyes standing out from his pale countenance.

Service à la française style dishes swarmed the table for them. An uncommon style of dining but she finds she’s eager to experience it. He told her about how they dined this way in the restoration. Tables groaning with food to celebrate the Kings return to the throne after years of Cromwell’s parliamentary rule.

Dragean just oozes life and experience out of his fingertips. It’s woven into his words, the amount he’s lived and seen and all he’s done. Every anecdote brimming bursting with history and knowledge.

He was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, a favourite to Cleopatra. He had fought for the Plantagenets during the war of the roses. He’s met Shakespeare and King Louis XIV, and Martin Luther and a handful of Roman Emperors. He’s lived on sun soaked isles and in castles and palaces of kingly influence. Explored every country this world can boast of.

He’s seen and done so much and it’s terrifying the amount of experience that drips off him in swathes of languages and rich stories. Its intimidating and powerful and he always makes her want to know more.

He turns his head to the doors as they are opened. And there stands his love shrouded in stars and pallid creamy silk. Love centre stage in her grey eyes. She steps past their Butler and into the room.

“Enjoy your supper. Your Ladyship. Your Lordship.” Jomar wishes to them as she slowly smiles at him. She nods at him as he slips out and shuts the door. Enclosing her and Draegan in simple company of the candlelight.

The stars wink and flood in from the window. The fire cracks. The table looks so handsome Iris can easily spy the neat domineering hand of Jomar in the exact placements of the wine and water goblets. By the fire the usual tangled grey heap of hounds lay snoring. Cerberus and Caligula, and Titus. Theron - their tone deaf hunting beagle - is also stretched out comically with his fat belly on show, and his paws in the air.

“I offered Jomar a night off duty. He said he wishes Kylo went away more often.” He smiles as she walked to join him. Iris chucked at her Butler’s usual brand of pettiness.

She watches him as he cupped his hand over the back of the candle to calm the shaking shiver of the flame as he light the waxy tapered ends of the candle. Waiting for the flame to take. She watches as the flame burst and lit up his features as he concentrated on his task.

Where he is stood with his front facing the table, she stands and watches how his hair drapes in long ribbons down his back. She could scent that he’d bathed too. His hair is full of the climbing citrus-sweet vine of lemons and his jasmine and berries cologne lends itself well to this scent.

On top of being absolutely heart stealingly-beautiful he has to smell incredible at all times too.

“May I pour you some wine?” He asks gently as he turns back from readying their table. She likes that he wanted to do some things for himself. He was no indolent being. He knows love required effort.

“I bought a case of it from Greece. Pomegranate wine. A perennial favourite.” He explained.

“Sounds terribly exotic.” Iris smiles. He reaches for the glass carafe and unstopped it to pour a ruby glug of it into two glasses. He hands her over her glass and she takes a sip of it. Idly looking out at the stars from the huge arched windows. The wall of them that the dining table sat opposite.

“It’s delicious.” She remarks when she lowers her glass. Licks the drips of tartaric red of it off her lips. Deep and sweet like a summer midnight perfumed with sugary trailing flowers.

Draegan comes closer. His hand holds to the back of her waist as he leans in and

softly takes a taste of her lips. Yanks her in. In her surprise she moans into his sudden kiss. Her heart squeezes in giddy and sudden like a fist clenched it. He slides their bodies closer together. The long line of him pressing to her. A warm belly, a firm chest. Enclosing strong arms wrapping for her hips.

A kiss that makes her back arch it’s so dazzling. One that made her see time and space it was so drawing and tender.

His tongue flicks slowly at her lower lip and she gasps. He almost fists her dress in his hand on the back of her hip. Such sudden lust.

When he pulls back, his breath fans dry against her mouth. Muggy hot. He kisses her again, simpler. He hums when they pull back. Her cheeks are full of heat.

“ _Mm_. It is rather delicious-“ He remarks flirtily. Her cheeks flood with more impossible burning heat. She looks up at him. Their hips still slotted close together. The height difference was nearly laughable. He had to bend at the waist just to reach her. She had to lean up on tip-toes just to try and reach him.

“The jewels look enchanting on you, spark.” He says quietly as they stand together. She exhaled slowly as his finger came up and gently touched the star that leans against her collarbone.

He felt how it sparked zips of pleasure when he touched her bare skin. Ripples of it shot straight from her spine to her nipples. The nearness of him; intoxicating

Iris had tucked his accompanying note in the box with the rest of her letters from home. Kept safe with the important things that matter.

“They’re beautiful. Thank you.” She comments earnestly. She’s touching to the heavy wreath of cold diamonds around her neck. He’s gifted her the stars and now they’re both swimming in them like perfectly lovestruck fools.

He had them made for her. That wreath. Designed and crafted to fit around that lovely kind neck of hers. He keeps that to himself for now. Didn’t wish to overwhelm.

Iris glances over to the table that looked so prettily arranged. The glassware winks like ice in the sun, or stars on the blackest night. There’s a big silver soup terrine dish, Another few silver domes dotted around. A fruit platter looking juicy and vibrant with colour.

She gestured in a nod to her chair. She could willingly live on the sustenance of his kisses. But she couldn’t let the beautiful service and hard work of the staff go to waste. No matter how addictive his lips.

“Shouldn’t we eat before it gets cold?” She asks.

He smiles. “We should.”

She takes a seat as he gently moves the chair inwards as she takes her place. She folds her napkin over her lap as he takes his seat next to hers. He leaves Kylo’s seat opposite the table empty respecting it. She sits at the head of the table and he’s on her left.

He lifts away the lids and various domes. An amazing and mouth watering scent of food hits her in the face like a powerful wave. A table brimming with her favourites. Beef stew cooked with cinnamon, cloves, and red wine. Roasted potatoes and buttered asparagus flaked with salt and pepper. He even asked cook to make some mashed turnips with snips of chives because he knows they are one of her favourites.

The pudding dishes are displayed around them too. Moulded creams and claret jellies. Fresh fruit sits plentiful and ripe on a tiered platter, red grapes dripping down with figs and dates and plump waxy oranges. There’s lemon syllabubs in dainty glass dishes and some of that marbled vanilla cake with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on.

For now, they tuck into their first course. Iris sits enraptured as Draegan tells her stories about his time in Turkey and then in the Middle East. He told her about the architecture. Cylindrical minarets, muqarnas, and arabesque patterns and scrolls detailed onto every building. Mosaics too, little chunks of blue and gold swarmed over whole buildings. Making them look blue as the sky it was under.

Dry, hot cities made of rust or gold. Because of the colours of the bricks and clay sunk deep in the soils. He told her about his stay in a Sultan’s great palace. The outrageous beauty of it. A shimmering palace made of white marble, with gold domes that blazed in the sun. So much wealth.

He told her the sultan had a garden in his palace that looked like nirvana itself. A menagerie of exotic animals left to roam free within it. Blue pools of water and fountains and moist greenery bathing under the sun. Butterflies scurried from plant to plant in the air. Huge trees brimming with silky juicy offerings of fruit. Banquets and balls held each night.

The commodities of the region lay in silks, dried fruits, and rare spices that came from crocus’s. He tells her he remembers walking through a Middle Eastern market. Such treasure troves. Antiques and fine woven carpets and gold pots stacked as high as the eye could see.

The air absolutely swam thick with the tickling scent of spices, piled high into huge triangluar towers of it on the spice stall. The souk was a teaming hotbed of noise. Loud languages and beggars playing ouds, darbukas or a pungi, children playing barefoot in the street, proprietors haggling over their stalls. Animals bartering to be sold, goats and sheep and camels. Loud daily prayer from the mosque nearby. An assault on the senses as much as the blazing sun was.

He regaled how the sand was so soft. Like stepping onto warm grains of brown sugar. The purple lilac of a chilling midnight over the dessert with a monsoon butter-yellow moon.

His blue gaze held hers as he spoke all the while. Only breaking to pour her more wine. They’ve emptied the carafe and eaten everything on their plates before they know it. Two polite footmen come and clear the dirty plates and Iris barely sees them.

She’s lost on his stories and her blood is syrupy with the amount of excellent wine she’s imbibed. They’re munching their way through the fruit and the cinnamon cakes and the cold sweet lemon syllabubs.

She licks off the sweet lemony pudding from her spoon smiling as he told her about his adventures in such sun drenched exotic lands. The affluence, the heat. She could almost smell the bitter spices choking the air of the souk. As he’d described it so vividly.

They retire to the fireside with full bellies and the last of the wine. Sit on the settee’s near the recumbent lazy hounds. Titus decided to hop up onto the sofa next to Iris and drapes his paws across her lap and shoving his snout at her so she can pay his head.

“I won’t put up with dissension just because Kylo is out the castle for one night, Titus.” Iris tells him sternly. He yawns and wags his tail lazily. Wheezing some yawn that sounded like a whine. Laying massive shaggy grey head down on her cream lap. She doesn’t quite have the heart to shoo him away - yet.

Draegan chuckles from the settee opposite. Leaning back and crossing his legs. Eyes flowing with love and mirth. Cerberus is attracted to him like gravity. He rests his head near Draegan’s knee.

“They know you are the softer touch of the two.” Draegan comments. Rubbing his palm over Cerberus’s huge black velvet head.

“Call a spade a spade. A pushover.” Iris pipes up with a coy smile.

“I believe your strengths lie a different way.” He tells her.

He believes her resilience, patience and her mercy are the strongest things about her. Kylo matched up well to that with his sometimes short fuse of a temper and his ruthless nature. They paired together well as opposites. Even if they didn’t know it. He certainly saw it in them. He loved all facets of it about them.

“It’s nice to be seen in terms of strengths and not weaknesses.” She admits as she strokes Titus’ ear. Before she gives his flank a solid pat that sends him slinking back to the floor among his fellow hounds.

“You were never weak.” He informs. “Not in any form or meaning of the word.” His belief in her strengths made her chest feel all slippery and fluttery warm. He knows what weakness was and there was never a scrap of that in her soul.

“I disagree. At present I’ve two very handsome weaknesses forever preying on my attention.” She smiles as she sips some wine. Meeting his eyes over the rim of her glass. The fire cracks and glows, warming the sides of their faces as they sit there, drunk with love and gazing so longingly at each other.

“Good.” He simpers with the start of that sharp smirk. It makes her laugh. Putting her wine glass in her lap lest she spill it all over her dress.

Shame doesn’t stick to this demon.

“I will in no way suspend my pleasure nor be ashamed of being any sort of weakness of yours.” He answers. His voice warm and lulling. So slightly deeper with his affections. His insinuations and sheer pride of being so made her spine prickle and quiver.

“Just so long as you know-” He added. “That I return that very same sentiment tenfold.” He assures. Leaning in from across the settees. She boldly keeps eye contact with him.

If he has a weakness, it had to be her, sat there in silks and draped in stars, smiling at him.

Iris feels the heat of the fire burn at her skin. Especially her cheeks. She must look like a red rose being around him like this and blushing so often.

The hour grows late. The starry night reeling on and on. They sit and talk until midnight slips closer. Iris forgot how much infatuation made her giddy. Even just sat here talking to him and it becomes everything.

Every look is a little delicious happenstance. Every half smile and laugh curls a sharp wrecking bolt of longing through them. New love clouds up everything and scarcely leaves room for little else. She recalls the same with Kylo; that heady new romance and heart throbbing infatuation.

He was quickly becoming one of her new favourite feelings. Every spec of a stunning smile. The way his lips stretch and the wrinkles by his eyes. Every melodic laugh. Moments she wanted to swallow up and keep them, to bring out and cherish sometime.

Eventually the lateness of the hour and sadly another empty carafe of the ambrosian wine sends them off to their bedchambers.

Draegan walks her along the cool castle halls, in half gold, half black and with white stars peeking coldness in from every window it could.

They come to a slow stop at the bedchamber door. Turn to face one another. A slanted square of moonlight frames them where they stand from the arched window. Casting watery light to wash over the pair of them. His hair glows with it. Floaty and gossamer like flaxen. His eyes are unnervingly blue and bright. So clear and gorgeous.

He takes her hand and kisses the back of it. Full and deep. Lingering for a second. Holding it in a way that told her how dear she was to him. Some wisps of hair fell forwards onto his shoulders. Clasping gently as air. When he pulls back they lock eyes. “Goodnight, Iris.”

“Goodnight Draegan.” She smiles back. “Today was, wonderful.” She pledges openly.

She inserts herself slowly into his chest. Leans up and holds one of his satin coated shoulders. Brushed her lips to the clean shaven plain of his cheek. Lays a kiss against his cheekbone.

“And thank you for the stars.” She whispers in a beaming smile stretching her lips. Because it was, so utterly. She feels the heat burning evenly between them when she draws close. She can feel the warmth surging off him. The space filled when he breathes. The way he’s tilted his head and holding the arm that touched his shoulder.

Close enough to kiss. To grab. To indulge this spark of lust that existed between them. They both felt it’s potency sliding fiercely into their blood. She can feel it in the parting of his lips as he looks handsomely down at her. His eyes are positively _hungry_ -

She breaks the dizzying spell and steps back. Slips her hands off him. “Sleep well.” She wishes. Her hands feel so cold and empty now they were off him.

He wants to clench and unclench his fingers into fists. Rid himself of the electric current that still skipped across his skin from her touch.

He smiles and nods. “Sleep well little spark.” He steps back and turns away. She can’t resist watching the sway of his long hair down his back as he walked away. Long legs striding him away from her.

Iris opens the door to the bedchamber suite and slips inside. The latch of the door closing made such a loud echoing sound in all this weighty and sudden silence.

She sighs as she huddled back into the door.

The room is dim. Candles on her bedside are lit. Red walls opulently dark. Covers of the bed are crisply pressed and ready to be slept in. She stands with her back to the door as she takes in the room that simply burns and aches. Pining with the absence of her husband. With noise and company of any kind.

She hasn’t spent a night sleeping alone since their before their elopement and Highland wedding.

With a sigh she begins undressing herself. Taking off the perfect jewels and restoring them in their box. Out comes her earrings. And the pinching hair pins. She sighs in relief when her hair tumbled freely down her back.

And then it’s loosening the laces at the back of her dress. Working next on her stays and her stockings after that. She rolls them up and placed them neatly on the vanity stool. Ready to be collected in the morning. She untied her petticoats and her chemise. And slipped on her loose fitting nightgown. A cool release against her skin after crushing stays and a stiff silk.

She deadened all the candles with a puff of breath. She left the curtains open. She felt like it was too suffocating without a crack left in the heavy dark things. She lays down into bed with cool blue of late night gushing into the room. Spilling in from the window.

She settled down on her pillow. Covers pulled up to her waist. She listens to the sound of Ranlor’s busy forest bathing under the moonlight. Crashing tree branches creaking and bashing together. Wind combing through the pine needles. Owls hooting. Wolves snarling and howling in the far distance. Foxes cries sound harrowing and shrill.

She looks at the canopy hanging above her head. Very aware that next to her she could detect the slight pine drift and brambles of Kylo’s cologne on the cotton. She brushes her nose against it. Closed her eyes and pulls deep in an inhale, devouring the scent of the man she’s missing. She reaches over and pats his pillow.

She chews the inside of her lip as she looks past that and sees the third pillow where Draegan had lain his head last time he was here. Resting with them both. One of their nights lounging together.

She shifted on her side and tucked her clasped hands under her pillow. Shifting further into the bed. Sinking to the downy mattress.

She tried to let sleep come and take her. Slowly drift her away to the soothing vale of rest. For the darkness to swallow her up.

It is a fickle fool to her tonight. And it makes an exhibition of her.

She couldn’t get comfortable. That niggling annoyance came first. She twisted this way and that. She kicks the covers off. Too stifling. Too hot. And then she’s too cold. She yanks them up to her shoulders. Turns the pillow around. To no avail.

She tries sleeping on her side. When that’s no use, she tried being flat on her back. Pressing her hips down. She tried letting her mind wander. She tried breathing. Counting Erland’s. None of it is any use.

She twisted and turns in the sheets. Groaning in annoyance and huffing as she turned. Before flopping back and staring at the canopy. Her eyes felt heavy but the rest of her is wired. Too awake.

Usually wine made her sleepy. But tonight it had not. She feels stirred up. Energetic somehow. With something like an uneasiness that she can’t place-

A sudden noise blares at the cold window. She leaps out her skin as a cable of crows rest on the balcony. One of them on the tiles tapping on the window. Heart racing, she sits up. Clutching the sheets to her chest. Adrenaline spiking at every nerve. Alarm still coursing through her.

Iris cursed under her breath. Eyes shutting as she let her body calm down from the sudden jump.

She calmly breathed as the black bird cawed and fluttered its wings and took off into the night. She glowered at the disappearing creature for startling her so.

But it made her definitely realise she wasn’t going to get any sleep anytime soon.

She sat up and folded the covers off herself. Shuffled her feet into meagre silky blue slippers she kept by the bed. She padded quickly across the bedchamber and turned the handle sharply in the door and pulled it open.

She wandered through the castle. Moonlight striping over her as she passed along the windows. She wrapped her arms about herself. Crossed around her body as she slowly meandered through the halls of her home. She did have an ultimate location in mind-

She puts her hand on the banister and stares up at the long twist of a staircase that ribboned stone steps up into the base of the turrets.

She can see the white stuffed stag, brilliant prancing in moonlight. She seized her nightshirt by the thighs and plucked a fistful of it into her hand. Lifting it so she could ascend the stairs without the hem of it causing her bother.

She feels her unbound hair sway and flick down her back as she climbs the stairs. She just comes to the landing and an imposing body almost collided into hers. But they stopped themselves.

Dragean was in front of her before she could draw in a breath of surprise.

He was on the stairs heading down. Here before her. Barefoot. Gown billowing at his sides. Breeches still clinging on his legs. Hair free, moving against his creamy skin. His brow is pinched with concern. His mouth open as he pants.

He’s in front of her so quick it’s like lighting strobing before her. Flash of white hair. A blue robe. Ivory skin. Handsome voice softened with care.

“Are you alright?” He asks. His hand anchored to one of her shoulders before she could even process he was there.

She’s so heartened by the fact that he knew something was wrong. Of course he did. He’s so attuned to it.

She sighs in embarrassment at her silliness. “I’m well. I assure you. _Oh_ , It’s so foolish-“ She had to laugh at herself. He frowns and tilts his head deeply at her. Standing now with both his big hands on her upper arms.

So big they could have capably encircled right around her entire arm. He looks down at her no less worried. He is avowed to her safety after all.

“I couldn’t sleep no matter what I tried. And then a bird flew onto the balcony and it startled me.” She tells him.

“You can’t sleep?” He reaffirms gently.

She shakes her head to confirm it. She looks up and cups her hands around his elbows to assure him she’s truly fine.

“May I keep you company for a while in your chambers?” She seeks. The absence of Kylo hurt her too much in their bedchamber. It’s too loud. Too noticeable. The lack of him or his voice, even his snores, or the way he filled the vacant cold space behind her in the sheets. Always.

“Please do, spark.” His smile finally comes back. He slips a hand to touch her lower back as they walk up the stairs, past the prancing stag and upwards into his cluster of rooms. He opens the door for her that had been left ajar.

His cobalt room is simply drowning in blue. As if underwater.

Not only is it his preferred colour choice, cool and calm like sea melding to the sky. The white pillows and sheets almost searing so white on the unmade bed. The large terrace doors leading out to the balcony the length of the room they are open wide and nothing but stars and the pitch black sky spill in. Rolling dark velvet sweetly invading the blue room.

There’s a wooden tripod with a telescope perched by the window. Tilted up to the heavens. A verbose stack of astrology books he’d read a thousand times or more, perched on the end table by the blue French Louis armchair.

She likes that he held a moment in time to simply admire the night skies in all their majesty. It was a little colder in here. But the fire keeps away any spring chill. It blazes amber-gold against the engulfing blue.

Iris notes the fact the bed hadn’t been slept in. It was still as laid as flawless as a calm lake. Not so much as a ripple or crumple of the sheets. She was worried she’d woken him with his worry for her being momentarily scared.

“You weren’t sleeping?” She turns back to him where he walks in after her and pulls the door closed.

“I couldn’t either.” He admits. “I miss him too.” He adds. Offers it up. Simple as that. She’s heartened to find that they’re on the same page. She nods as she feels taken by the same sentiment. It was made worse for being into their room without that dark mountain of a vampire there.

“ _Do_ you sleep, usually?” Iris presses curiously. His inquisitive little spark. Her jovial tone hinted that she already knew the answer.

“It is a needless task for a creature such as I.” He tells.

They stand by the door together. He does so love how the moon makes such a flimsy article out of her old nightgown. Almost spins the thin worn cotton to something damn near see-through. It’s enchanting. He had her in jewels and silks earlier. But this here is intimacy and comfort at its finest and its-

 _Perfect_.

“Though I do rest sometimes merely to keep to the routine of it.” He adds as he moved across to the window. Back to his night time hobby.

Iris watched him move across to the window. She followed suit. Standing and looking out the window with him. There was so much to drink in. The mountains kissed by the moon. The forest around for miles eaten up into the distance. No more than a dark spiked blanket of trees. The way the stars seemed to wink and shimmer in turn. Night settled so sweetly.

“I used to regard the view from my bedroom window at Westwell to be a fine prospect. But it just pales in significance to this one.” She tells him. She sets herself on the edge of the bed and they bask in the blue of the landscape together. She kicks off her blue slippers and brings her knees up to the side.

He turns half back to her and smiles. “Care to look closer?” He asks. Tapping the telescope before him.

She nods and springs to her feet. He steps back where she comes across to stand in front of him. She brings her eye gently to the sight and carefully touches the side of the cold metal to bring it into focus. Closing her less dominant eye to concentrate.

She feels him move behind her. Stood at her back. A vast tower of silks and comfortable heat, even in this cool room. Kind fingers settle on her hip. He looks upwards, slanting his face to where she was peering.

A smile and a gasp, interbred, leaves her lips as she sees the clear patch of sky in such stark detail.

Infinite colours and lights swirling together. It’s by no means a clear picture but she can see one cluster of stars glimmering bright amongst all the rest. It’s a beautiful blue. Interstellar dust lit up by a central young star.

“How extraordinary.” She remarks gently. Stuck on the sight for a long moment.

Behind her, Draegan drops his eyes to her neck. Idly letting his fingers shift into her undone hair. Following a wavy line of it back from her ear. The touch makes her shiver - in the most delicious of ways. Delightful awareness and love licking along her veins.

“Do you know what that particular nebula is called?” He seeks.

She pulls back from the telescope and turn to capture his look in her own. “I’m afraid I don’t.” She offers.

“It is the Iris nebula. I was there when it was discovered in 1794. It is so named, because of _you_.” He says slowly. Eyes piercing into hers.

He had named that very star after her.

Her mouth drops open in plentiful amazement. His explanation hit her like a lightning bolt to the heart. Her mind tumbled and twisted in earnest to understand this show of devotion.

“Draegan-“ She sighs in shock. Her mouth is open and more words want to come, he can tell, but she cannot grasp the faculties to discover them.

“I could think of no better tribute to you. Singular even among millions. Casting light upon the dark.” He smiled winningly. It has brought him comfort in lonely times.

That he could be on his Greek island, watching the night sky as he sometimes does, he need only raise his eyes and admire the beauty of the star he named after a woman he would one day know. The woman he gave up to his first love. Maybe one day she could see him and love him too-

If not, he’d still have that star to watch over him. It would give him an offering of contentment. He never imagined that she’d be here, sharing in the sight of it with him.

She’s still speechless. She steps away from the telescope and puts herself right up close into his chest. Still hardly knowing what to say.

She can’t offer him anything. She wishes she could name mountains and cities and entire constellations and galaxies of stars after him as tribute to what she feels too; she is empty handed in terms of what she can give. But what she feels could fill oceans.

She settled for placing her hand in the middle of his chest and leaning up to kiss him, instead. He takes her meaning and lowers his lips to meet hers. Desperately crashing their mouths together.

His hand graduated up from her hip to the back of her hair. Holding her as she kisses him, slides her hand around his shoulder as if it could keep him closer.

Lust started to creep up, simmering in their blood. She could feel the fierce war drum pound of her heart beating and shaking at her ribs. She can hear nothing, feel nothing, but the solace of him as he kisses her back and flames, lazy and lush, start to trickle through her veins. Demanding attention, commanding her to need him.

Something deep inside her _needs_ ; it aches with the need. Ember-hot. Glowing like lit coals. It throbs and burns. As if it’s something rooted deep inside that’s never been touched. As if she were a quivering maiden on her wedding night waiting to be taken. To be _devoured_ ;

She’d never wanted a quiet sensible sort of love; she wanted one that had the possibility to consume her bodily whole.

He lurches for her. Dips his knees and in no time at all his hands capture her under her thighs and lifts her too him. Her belly squirms because she’d long suspected he had a gargantuan pool of physicality and muscular strength she’d yet to see him dip into, and now he was, and _oh_ , was it intoxicating to be on the receiving end of.

He hoists her to him. Pinning them close. Walking so assuredly with her in his arms, into the bed post as he pressed her back there. Kiss lasting on and on and unravelling her mind to pure sensation.

She feels how his breath dips and wavers as she slips her hands along the warm muscle of his shoulder. Feeling the solid of him. His skin and her fingers drag over the tips of the scars on his back. Following along the hill of his shoulder bone. Wisps of white hair dragging like tree breeches combing in water, so undoubtedly fine between her fingertips.

His hands stay safely caressing her hips. Feeling her through the veil of cotton. His lips have another destination in mind. He breaks their dizzying kiss.

The world swirls orange and blue and drags together as he trails his lips along the bone of her cheek and onwards into the messy line of her hair. He slants his nose under her jaw and takes his gentle time placing kisses onto her throat. Each one alights sparks in her spine. Travels the length of her and bounces around sheer crux’s of desire.

Her nipples harden so quickly in the cool air they tense and ache. Where they graze against him it’s enough to make her lose her mind. One thought only echoed to her bones; she wants him. She wants him where she can feel herself glistening and scorching-hot. A divine agony of need knots her up. She feels how her sex pulses with attraction.

She whimpers and pants where his lips find every blessed weakening spot on her neck. Nuzzles her with his nose and he knows her body so well, it’s like he’s consulted a map of her desires she wasn’t aware even existed.

Her back curves inwards to him, bending breaking suddenly, instinctually she offers her entire neck to him. Tilting her head to the side. Her fingers have to slot into his hair as she gasps when the slight rake of teeth sliding over the spot under her ear.

She doesn’t mean to pull his hair at the nape but it’s a mixed blessing as she feels his voice pound through his chest on a ragged moan because of it. He’d never tell a soul, but he so likes having his hair touched. Especially the vice grip of a lover yanking through it as he pleasures them with his velvet mouth, and his clever clever tongue.

He nibbles and caresses spots that make goosebumps stand like a blanket of needles across her skin. Tastes the ghost of soap and the perfume long faded on her neck. She hurts so much in want of him. She can see why so many fall to sin; the devil was so much stronger than the will of mere mortal men.

Iris hiccups and whines on a broken sob when his nose slides into the divot of her collarbone and his mouth drags along it. Silky hot, leaving rose petal red shapes sucked on her skin. He’s playing capably with so much sweet pleasure that dances on the edge of idyllic pain.

Her calls and sighs of pleasure sets a river of fire in his blood. Now he knows how that sweet simple sound could call even the animal likes of Kylo, to heel.

His hands slip devilishly slow up her back. Taking the sides of her hips in hand. Such slow caresses. Where her gown falls down - always too big - he kisses along her shoulder. Holds her close and breathes her in. Takes deep lungfuls of her skin.

A full blown tremor wracks her whole being when she feels him duck, taking his glorious mouth off her for a second. He dips his knees again, with the motive of lifting up her gown from the hem that started at her calves. He glides it up along her legs. Let’s it bunch at her thighs so he can caress them.

Her eyes flew open. And his touch instantly halted. Worried he’d done something wrong. He senses the cloud of confusion that churned in her like a storm coming to spoil a summers day.

She shrank back a little. Lead flooding dead swimming and heavy reality in her veins. Cold ice poured into the inferno tempest of her blood. The shock so sudden it’s painful.

“I’ve overstepped.” He spoke gravely though a pant. His limbs felt heavy and intoxicated with the want for more of her, it took every ounce of his strength to step back. He withdrew all touch. His face drawn back in fear is the most heartbreaking sight. A wrench ripping right across her gut.

“I’m sorry spark. I thought you wanted-“ He supposed.

Her belly acted so strangely she hardly knew what to call the action; it somehow flipped and twisted like knotted rope tossed in the sea. “I do-“ She’s quick to clarify.

She groans. “ _God_ , Draegan, I want you more than I want air. But- I thought-“ She stammers. Trying to keep her head clear enough to wrap around it all. She places a hand across her middle to dispell the grey ache that sat there.

His expression is so curious and seriously pained it almost makes her doubled over with agony to know she caused it. Brows drawn. Lips a gentle line. Hair mussed up all handsome, and a touch of blush to his cheeks and neck. Robe almost slipping off his creamy shoulders.

His lips look so blessedly good kiss-wet and all red.

“I thought you only-“ She wets her lips and his eyes keenly follow the action. “I’d led myself to suppose that you only made love to well, to vampires.”

A sigh pulls deep from out his chest. “Spark.” Comes in a slow hum from his dazed mouth.

“Because of Kylo and then Celine. And I know we agreed on loving each other, but we never specified precisely what that incurred. How intimate we would be. Oh _lord_ , I feel so foolish now to see what you meant and I-“ She stumbles over the own idea that she’d brewed over in her head for a while now.

She places her hand over her forehead and chided her stupid silly brain for making an absolute mess of this nice act they were finally supposed to be sharing.

He can’t be gentle about this. Not any longer. He pulls her closer by the hips.

“Let me make something perfectly plain-“ He promises in a growl that makes a heartbeat pulse across her sex. She feels his words there. Travelling, wracking along her whole soaked sex. Clenching. It twinges to hear him growl so. She whimpers because of it.

“I’ve loved you long before you were a star in the sky. My Iris. You've had me snaked around your finger since I first saw you, and you think I wouldn't desire you?” He asks urgently.

His answer comes on swift wings:

He crushes her to him and into another kiss. Cupping her head in his hand and kissing her so hard she lost all breath and reason in under a second.

They let themselves get well and truly lost this time. No more secret reasons standing in the way. Nothing obscuring the simple fact of this joining. Nothing left but love, and plenty of desire to sustain it.

He plucks her off the ground and her legs wrap around him on instinct. Around his trim waist. He cups both his big reaching hands under her ass, palming her there entirely, cheek in each hand, and he holds her close. One hand breaking away to slip up her back. Hers wind around his broad shoulders as much as she’s capable.

He walks them across to the bed. Long thighs she can feel flexing under her ass as he sets her down on the soft covers. Her knees part and she welcomes him between them. They mould together like they are fitted pieces. Two matching halves lost and now joined again.

Her hands try and hook under the back of his robe and try to desperately to shove it down his back and free him of it.

He withdraws his hands and sits back. Groaning and closing his eyes when she leans up and kisses little spots of his neck. Stroking the silk down over his back. Baring him to the cold air and the fire. And she can’t deny she’s longing for a glimpse of him again. Utterly naked.

He pulls back, white hair draping over her chest as he kneels up and shrugs the gown off like she wanted. It drips off his arms and he lets it drop to the floor off the side of the bed. She tugs him eagerly back into her arms. She wanted her fingers leaving red marks on the snowy skin. Tear her fingers into him. Make him blush. Bruise him with this hearty passion she possesses. Delighting at the sensation of his arms, back, and warm shoulders like laundered silk under her fingertips.

He smells like freshly plucked jasmine, like the sweetest tinge of nature on a warm, spring breeze, and the heat of him is soaking through her bones. Filling her with a longing she cannot define, making her writhe against the soft down of his luxury bed.

Feathers and mattress and soft slipping silky covers clasping against her back. A long cushioning line supporting her. A sharp construct to the hardness she feels as she lies underneath his godly body.

He rumbles again, a low, pleased sound, as he turns her head the other way with his nose and goes back to snuffling quietly against her hairline. Tasting hotly against this ear as well, and the soft skin below it. Tasting of her skin and sweat and the muggy moans that fall from her mouth.

She can feel how the ache between her legs is growing more ravenous. A coursing rush of wet seeps steadily from her end she hears his moan purr against her neck.

She feels a rush of it, and of blissful delight, surge strong when his hips bracket hers through her dress. Rubbing them together. The long sure line of his heavy cock rutting against her as they kiss and writhe. Rocking his hardness to her body.

When his fingers climb up her legs again to find the hem of her gown, a smile bursts onto her lips. The endless drift of him pushing up her nightgown makes her breath come short. He kneels up and savours every second as he drags the gown to her hips. Baring her.

She decided to be an ally in his quest. Not that she ever wanted to oppose it. She sits up and lets him tuck it up her back. He leans in and drops a sacred kiss at her shoulder before pulling back to bring the swathe of worn cotton up and over her head. Shedding her of the garment. Hair tumbling back into place after the shirt mussed it.

He pulls it away and discards it when he’s done. It finds the same resting place as his gown. Utterly forgotten.

She’s naked for him now. There’s the breeches left on his legs as the only remaining scrap of civility. The rest of it is lost to the blue spring night.

She watches him as he stays on his knees and devours the sight of her in his bed and sans any sort of clothing.

He feasts first with the eyes. She lays under him and watches with the stars sparking off her eyes as he draws warm fingers down the central line of her body. Her nipples are perked and twisted into little hard knots for him. Prickles of longing, desire and maybe the thrill of his being so close is pimpled across her skin. He can feel the chill of her panting breath travel down her body as she observes him.

He pays mind to every single piece of her. The soft of her belly, the round of each thigh. Every rib. Every mole. The little pink wiggled scars of stretch marks at her thighs and her tummy. She had more shape there than she supposed she ought.

He thought it was divine. Every sweet blessed inch of her is. Every mark and scar and freckle. Homage after sweet homage of life littered on her skin, adding furthermore to her humanity.

Her lungs shiver and swell when he drapes his decadent fingertips between her legs. Brushing over the thick curls there. He feels what his touch does to her. He wants more of that-

He leans in and over her. She sighs another soft “ _Oh_ -“ as he leans down to nuzzle at her breasts.

His hair drapes down and tickles her before his lips reach her skin. He runs his nose along the soft shape, even where she lays and they droop off to the side, his fingertips are soft as rose petals as he lifts her breast to his mouth and lightly flicks his hot blazing tongue around her nipple.

Words are lost on her. It’s such divine torture. Being teased and touched and not where she desperately needs him. Not slipping between her legs to tease her cunt, where she can feel such slick seeping out of her and probably staining his fine bedclothes. And where his hips are still on hers, she reckons she’s pressing wet up against the straining hardness of him in his trousers.

She was used to taking Kylo in his feral state, he knows with certainty that her taking him will be no challenge. He is endowed differently to her husband. Where Kylo might have been further blessed in terms of girth, he was longer in terms of length and more curved. He wasn’t one to boast loudly over his sexual liaisons. But, he’d never left any lover unsatisfied after he’d lain with them.

All of a sudden, he tilts and rocks his hips- _good lord_ how she knows it. The hard ridge of his cock head catches on her wet sex and she groans so loud with it.

He finds that an appropriate moment to slip his entire hot mouth over her breast and toy with her nipple. Slight sting of teeth makes a squeak bubble up in the back of her throat. She feels his smile around her soft flesh. He rips his mouth away and wetly it slicks off her skin.

He travels his way slowly from her wet nipple to her neck. The cool of the night air slithers to the cooling slip of his mouth left wet on her skin. Such a harsh cold when his mouth is so warm. Fluttering kisses against her collarbone.

He comes for her mouth again and her kisses are starving hungry things. Desperate beasts that makes her clutch his head close and drink of him like she won’t survive.

He grinds his hips into her again with a subtle shift and her response is anything other than subtle.

“ _Oh_ , oh Draegan, please. More. I beg you.” She babbles. She hears herself speak the words as if sinking underwater. Her head is hazy turning in circles and this demon is making her body pulse with energy that she can’t describe.

She feels floating and weightless in the dark with his hips slamming into her own. It’s a dark and decadent impression. Like swimming sticky opium and dark

Purple midnights in summer. Cloying heat, syrupy and thick black with it. Inescapable and the high of it is impossible and tantric.

One hand slowly takes the shape of her thigh. Feeling along the plush plain of it. Strong sure legs. All that walking and dancing she enjoys, he guesses. He traces up from the bone of her knee, in a skimming line right up to the inside of it. It’s maddening how slowly and skilful he moves. He will not rush this- he’s dreamt of this for millennia. He wants to gather up every sensation soaked moment of her.

She fidgets when his fingers come to the soft patch of her inner thighs. Sensitive and pure, she’s softer than churned butter of cream and he has to taste her there. With a parting kiss farewell to her throat, he shifts backwards on his knees. Covers crumpling under him.

His mouth and the silky drag of hair is at her sternum with a kiss. And then her ribs. He runs his lips over every one and recanted his sanity with the way her scent stuck onto his tongue. Sweet sweat like floral oil, a clutch of roses and salt, soap and feminine skin in his nose. Addictive.

He’s at her belly, the soft cosy pouch shes forced to hide under chemises and stays. He loves the cushioning lush of it against his mouth. He loves these soft, giving parts on a partner. Inner thighs, that weak spot under the ear, the plump at the backs of wide comely hips he could grab at. Paintings of old revered women oozing with shape and body and handfuls to seek grabbing at everywhere. He adores it more than anything. He adores her like nothing else.

His chin and his lips meet the plain of her navel. His nose fills with the bare scent of her sex that he’s only mere scant inches away from. If he thought her skin was irresistible, it’s nothing to this honeyed heat he can smell now.

He takes a drag and the rush of want for her slides along his spine and curls around him like a crushing serpent squeezing in.

He settled on his chest and smoothly guided his hands on her thighs to settle them comfortable over his shoulders. His sharp nose is pressing into the pulsing artery of her thigh. Drawing in a breath of the life that hummed there in her veins. He drags his mouth along to her inner thighs and bodily a rumble shudders out his chest when wet starts to smear on his lips already.

He swallows and licks his lips. Scent and wet and sex flowing into his mouth. She’s everywhere.

Her head is cast back on his pillow and her fingers have found solace in fisting the covers as he hovers his face so so so close to her cunt.

“Let me see your eyes, spark.” He husks against her adjacent thigh. She feels the heat of his breath burns.

He’s giving this thigh the same slow treatment as he did the other. Mouthing along with kisses and dragging himself over her like he’s got all the centuries in the world to love doing this. And he does. He has time to hand to make her feel all these things.

She raises her head on a sigh and looks down her body to watch him. An exquisite view. Her clouded eyes all gossamer silver and nearly wet with tears out of sheer Longing for this.

He meets her eyes as he moves, kisses where the crease of her thigh meets leg. Inhaled right over her curls that are swimming in the slick of her. It shines off her inner thighs in the starlight. She almost flies off the bed - flying and dying - when she feels his tongue take the shape of her cunt.

Starting at the delicate little pearl of her clit and sneaking all the way down to where the seam of her sex stopped. Tongue snaking over her plump lips. Her knees almost threaten to close around him, but his guiding hands smooth them down. Keeping her open to his onslaught.

He began by swirling his tongue at her. Finding a pattern that felt too impossible to analyse. The hot slip of his tongue felt wonderful stroking her so steadily. So capable.

She arches forwards, mouth echoing with a shout as he slips his tongue inside her and still continues the rhythmic circles and sucking. His tongue is firm and gentle and her strokes and nursed her clit with his tongue. Cupping it and laying sweet attention to it. He feasts on her so well she feels her body start to cool clammy and smeared with sweat as she writhed against his chest. Hips bumping up into his face.

She apologised and tries to draw back from the skilled slaughter of his mouth devastating her cunt. He won’t let her. Fingers grip her hips and keep her where she lays. Gushing staining wet all over his bed as her sex weeps for him and he feasts on every delicious drop she gives.

He decided to test every mortal fibre of her being when his tongue delves into her deep and it flickers against a spot that cracks a fissure of pure pleasure to crash across her belly. Needy with it, it hurts and burns but in the most phenomenal way.

His tongue is so long. It goes to lengths she didn’t know possible. It finds that spot that Kylo’s cock always managed to knock into. That hidden oasis of pleasure, and Draegan can find it with his demon tongue and reclaim it like it was his lost territory.

She soon finds a gentle pressure on her clit and her hooded eyes open to find his thumb deftly massaging and pressing not-too-hard- but just enough at the frail bud of her sex to make her whole lower body tremble with desire and the beginning of a begging wave of climax.

Her back savagely curves. She can feel her thighs spasm against his marble shoulders, shivering taut with what he’s doing to her. He’s hard as stone and she’s trembling spiralling away into a hazy limbed mess. He doesn’t urge her on with words. He can read her body and her needs well enough. Obliterating actions are his forte.

His moans are dispersed with the wet swill and suck of his actions as he lathes his tongue into her over and over. Humming and drinking in her cunt.

He senses it at once- that clawing warmth in her belly that stung like fire and chased her to the edge. He growls suddenly. An affirmation. A prayer. A plea. Shutting his eyes he sighs and grumbled against her as he pants and wills her on to cum on his tongue. He needs the savage suck of her cunt spasming and clutching at his tongue like she never wanted him to leave.

He’s chasing it too. For both their pleasures- hers is the ultimate goal of course - but he gets pleasure from lapping at her like this too.

She’s squelching at his mouth. She’s rolling down his chin and she’s all over this bed that he’ll never want to leave. Never to banish this sight from his mind of her climaxing against the bed of his tongue.

Her spine locks with a fierce thrill- legs splayed wide as her hips rut for him. She’s staring down at him between her legs, with hazy eyes and tears swiping down her cheeks. Sheer wordless agonies of moans fly loud from her mouth as he opens his wide over the crest of her sex, and laps at her with wet, deliberate long strokes of his tongue. He’s after something, the thing that’s gaining on her like a hell hound.

It rips through her like a current, a hot, blinding mess of pleasure and feeling that locks her body _up up up_ and then, she’s dying, she had to be.

She’s shouting his name like a doomed prayer “ _Draegan_!” And throwing her head back. A warning to him. It echoes out her mouth and spills across the canopy of the nighttime forest

Climax breaks over her in a wave on the storming sea, massive and swirling and powerful and its blinding. She makes a sound like she’s been wounded as her spine quivers and ridges in shuddering wracks as pleasure rips from her at the firm press of his mouth.

She can’t breathe for a moment, every muscle in her body paralysed to use as she sways bodily through a suffocating wave and lets it buffet over her more, and more, _more_ , and then a gush of moisture pushes out from her cunt in a wet, messy rush. Right to his mouth and he takes it all.

Her head is completely lost. Swirling up to the stars and dotted to bits. Blown entirely apart. Her limbs scattered like sodden wool. Heavy and indolent and she can’t find the strength to move.

She feels him against her sex. Swallowing her down still. The hot scorch and then the cool of his breath as he rests against her slit. She can feel the soaked plain of his smooth cheeks and nose. His chin shimmers with it. His eyelids lowered soft, so soft, as he nudged his nose into her clit, pressed his face deep, and languidly curling his tongue into her as she quivers with the aftermath.

She manages to open her eyes when he looms up above her. Retreating from touch. She feels so empty and cold with the absence of his face between her legs, and his shoulders, warm as sun baked stone, under her thighs. She can see the sheen of her shiny slick all over his lower face.

She manages to open her hooded eyes as she lays supine on the bed. Limbless and with a delectable warmth that she could feel making her belly and insides grow butter soft and withdrawn. Her arms and legs feel utterly sodden and drowning heavy. Her thighs twitch still. She catches a long pale glimpse of him in the room that now seemed bright compared to the inside of her eyelids.

And there he is, shrouded in all the light the moon and stars can give as he glides his last item of clothing down his legs. Kicks the restrictive breeches off his feet.

Hair glowing. Eyes piercing. As he smiles down at her. His usual grace and elegance in the way he moves, even without clothes. His skin is so flawless and smooth. In that moment, he really was an angel, she decided.

She’s seen him making love with Kylo and that gave her a clue as to his fully naked state. Long limber lines of his build. His cock was a true beauty that she hadn’t forgotten about either; long and veined, bobbing under its own weight as it curls upwards between his legs. He moves to her, drawn in irrevocably.

She sits up as he comes back to her on the bed. Gathers her arms around his back as he scoops her up into his. Settling over her and she lifts her legs when he encourages her to clutch them around his sticky hips. 

His cock feels fever-hot slotted against her pulsing cunt. Their hips smacking together as he comes close to kiss her.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been lying regaining her head from his tongue working her into a blissful orgasm, it could have been minutes, or maybe an hour, she can’t tell. Maybe he wiped his face before he came back to the bed.

Now the slick mess of her is tacky and only just dried on his chin and cheeks. A faint familiar tang she can taste on his lips as he offers his mouth to her.

She strings her arms around his neck and takes a kiss gladly. Fronts moulding as one. Desperate breaths clashing. Enmeshed in passionate bliss; her cunt tender and drenched against his spearing hard erection. Charred limbs and drunk enchanted hands. Ruby wet mouths and lingering eternal kisses. They rock, groan and writhe together like a boat taking the rough grain of the waves. They pull and push and meet.

He kisses her so tenderly for a man who had just drained her soul out her body with his very clever tongue. She laces her fingers in his hair and moans when he breaks away, wet blazing mouth kissing the corner of hers as they lay naked together.

He kisses the corner of her mouth again and he sighs a moan as he speaks. Sliding his hand up her thigh to her hip. They’re impossibly knotted together.

“I know I can be a lot. Laying with a demon like me can be overwhelming- but I will take the greatest care.” He tells. Wounded with need. His voice is a tender chasm through panting breaths.

He didn’t have to take cares to warn her. She knows him. She’s such a deep cosmic understanding of him she didn’t expect anything different in the way he’ll love her.

She clutches a side of his face and kisses him as proudly as she is able. Every spec of her love she pours into this kiss. She manages to speak through the terrible thunder of her heartbeat drumming her ribs.

“ _Please_ Draegan. I want you inside me.” She asks of him. Heaven knows how long they’ve waited for this. The torment he’s had to suffer for love. And now it’s freely within his grasp.

He sinks down and kisses her once more. Desperate drenched mouth seeking hers. She groans into him. Feels him shift his knee back slightly, one hand slips from her hip and curls around the thick base of himself.

He angles his hips and rests his flushed cock head against her entrance. The silky wet head comes away glistening silky wet with her. He looks up into her eyes and she looks so certain. Cheeks flushed, and now it’s flourishing down her chest. Eyes a bright starry silver.

His hips press the slightest touch forwards. Strong and surging. His mouth is back on hers as he arches over her. Sinking splitting her deep. Moans rip free from their mouths as they gasp together. Sharing breath. Noses bumping together.

He doesn’t rush this. Let’s the full weight of every feeling pound through them as he sinks inch by delicious inch into her. She’s moaning loudly into his open mouth. Thrown into sheer bliss by the mere feeling of his cock plunging at a measured pace into her. Stretching her out. She can feel him burrowing even deeper.

He curses in a language she can’t place when he rests to the hilt inside her drenched velvet walls. Sucking him even deeper than he ever thought possible to go. Breaching her with sheer ecstasy that made her toes curl at his legs and her nails bite into his shoulders. Head tipping back to the pillow, he kisses her throat with a wobbly kiss. Nose prodding into her jugular.

He had to rest his forehead to her sweaty brow. He’s dewy from this too. The once cold spring air whirling around them feels suddenly stifling. He feels their skin smear together.

He measured how it felt to pull back and slam into her again.

The volume of her yelp told him everything about her pleasure; His was enough to draw a gasp out his lungs. It spread through his belly like a wildfire. Everything destroyed. Laid bare in the face of making love to her at last.

“So divine.” He mumbled against her ear. Kissing the little spot below that set her brain to shiver tremors down her spine.

Pleasure ripples along every part of him. Their bodies thunder with sensation and clash in time together. If he had a heart, it would beat with the sheer amount of love she makes him feel.

Every single beat would thump for her-

He fucks her steadily. Makes her yield to his cock again and again. Back arching pleasure burns in the both of their groins.

She feels like she’s being changed. Draegan is cleverly shaping her body around his. The immense feeling and power behind each surge of his hips, it makes her groan with each tug and retreat of his cock plunging into her gorgeously soft cunt. Heat and wet swallowing him up.

He puts every feeling into actions. Words weren’t enough for this. This is beyond mere words. So full of each other

Breathy and wild passion takes over their bodies. They writhe and pant together. He sucks polite kisses and sharp dark bruises onto her neck and down onto the soft slope of her breast. Losing themselves in the rhythms of fucking.

He moves from his hips. Undulates and curled his body. Moving like music. Skilful and beautiful. Both to look at and to be on the receiving end of.

His mouth wasn’t the only thing that could wander freely where it liked- her hands skate along his slippery back. Feeling the mound of his scars stretch longways down his skin. The red raw tracks she’d kissed. She slips her hands down more. Sinks into the side of his hip and curls over to almost grab at the pounding flesh of his ass. Where their skin meets it is a savage wet slap. Pounding as one. She can feel her wetness swilling around him and spurting leaking out into the covers below them.

He snaps his hips to hers in a sudden assaulting jolt. Pumping into her like a man possessed. Gathering up the moans and the feelings he could make race through the pair of them by fucking her a little deeper, harder.

The warningless assault of his hips yanked a gasping cry right out her throat. Making her dig her nails into his shoulders. Legs curling around him so absolutely. Sweaty thighs tightening on his dripping back. Sweat cradled in the trenches in his skin either side of his spine.

He keeps the pace at just the right side of calm but keeping firm. Making her breasts graze against his chest where they jolt. He kisses her everywhere he can reach. Hungrily pants for her lips and she seals a sloppy slanted kiss over his indolent lips. Breaking the searing eye contact between them for only a moment.

They were both climbing towards the inescapable heat of climax. Iris groans long as slow as she feels the familiar tightening in her abdomen. Let herself savour the fill each time he pushed to her.

His hips began his firm pace; and maintains it. Sighing into her mouth and watching her as they fucked together. He could see it all, the bead of tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. The tremble of her lips and the fantastic love glowing in her eyes.

Bliss is so powerful now it scares her how much she feels it. She wants to wail his name and she doesn’t care if all Bavaria hears her. So tantalisingly close to a mind bending climax.

His hand comes up and slowly slides under the dry curtain of her hair sticking to her hot neck. Pure sensation melting her bones as their drenched sexes slap together and their hips knock.

He cups his warm hand around her wet neck. He’s almost sobbing, face drawn in his pleasure too. Brows pinched in the middle, mouth gaping. Eyes fixed on her own.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” He hushed into her mouth. Smooth porcelain voice of his finally breaking. A crack that splinters and shatters the poised voice of his to dust.

The rut of his hips sparks the beginning of something in the both of them that’s like ribbon unwinding from a spool. Unraveling. Coiling away-

“I love you.” She sobs. Fat tears break from her eyes and roll down her flushed cheeks. Salty scarring trails on a rosy blush. He kisses her cheeks and takes those tears away. He moans when he tasted them.

“I love you Iris.” His mouth opens and he gives her everything-

His hips slam to her three, four, five times and it’s enough to be the end of them.

Orgasm begins its cataclysmic churning in their bodies. It begins slowly at first, and then breaks. It’s a whole burst of slow bliss and then aching desire all at once.

Her body locks and shivers. Cunt clenching on his cock, fluttering and gripping in pulsing clutches. Climax rolls through her like a warm tidal wave consuming her veins and leaving her bled dry. Her toes curl and it’s like she can feel flames licking at her belly.

When she finds his eyes again, they seem to have shifted. Like dull white moonstones or shimmering pearls. He watches her cum on his cock with glad satisfaction in his eyes. His panting open mouth curves into a smile.

“That’s it, Iris. _That’s_ it.” He purrs. 

“Give it all to me.” He demands sweetly. Sucking the patch under her ear as he felt her vice like grip milk him of everything he could give.

He didn’t let up. He groans more and fucks her powerful right through two devastating orgasms. Drags it right out to the last second. His cock still pumping into her, plump and heavy and she can feel when he locks them together - not room to spare - not even air could get between them as his cock spurts his release inside her.

She cries out and latched her fingers in his back. So deep she fears she cuts him. Her fingertips feel sticky and she doesn’t know if it’s blood or sweat she’s taking from him. Leaving crescent shaped bruises and scratches on his shoulders near his scars.

A devious part of his mind hoped he’s scarred from her nails leaving daggers of touch in his back. Let there forever be marks that he bore as evidence of this night.

Her little sighs and moans are so sweet, as the pleasure and urgency begins to fade away. He pumps himself into her shallower now. Easing to a slow stop. Listening to the swill of their bodies squelching together. Sweat dragging where their bellies married together.

The warmth and orgasm subsided to leave a pleasant blaze of an ache in her belly. One of being so filled and so fucked.

Her eyes slip closed and her head tips back as they pant together. Where they were moving in tandem to fuck; now they are doing it to pant with exertion. He leans over her on his elbows, still joined inside her.

When she peeks her eyes open, his have returned to their striking shade of cobalt blue. The slip of his demonic mask had faded away. Back in place is this poised and utterly beautiful creature who just made her taste the stars she came so hard.

He shifts damp tickling hair off her forehead and smiles at her with languid contentment. Even his limbs are flushed with a lazy need to rest.

She nudged her lips up, bumping her nose into his, she soon slots her mouth to his. Tastes an echo of that pomegranate wine sweetly melded on his tongue with the tang of her. Her brain is too fuzzy and loose to clutch at any one word or sentiment.

His hands brush sticky hair back more from her neck. Finds her shoulders beginning to chill in the absence of their generating delicious sources of body heat. He nuzzled closer into her. Cock still inside her, she feels him everywhere. She feels him in places she didn’t know she could feel-

He wraps his arms around her waist and lifts her. Sinks her right down to the base of him in a way that has her gasping.

Clutching at his shoulders. He wraps her legs around his sticky hips. Wordlessly shifts them back, holding her with one arm, with the other he frees the velvet blue sheets and white cotton from underneath them. Tucks it around their bodies.

He lays her down when he is done. Shifting the covers over them both before settling her limbs out how she was previously laying. Finally slipping his hard cock from the gorgeous entrapment of her cunt. He sighs when he comes away, immediately she feels the rush of them sticky at her legs. Damply clinging to the fine cotton sheets beneath her.

She lets herself get swallowed up into the cool crisp of the mattress as he lies directly beside her. Their ribs stick together and he drapes and arm over her. She just had the faculties to turn on her side to face him. White hair drapes on his pillow like she hadn’t even been yanking at it for dear life.

His big palm cups her head. Thumbing along her cheekbone as she looked at him with lazy eyes that shone grey and honey-red from the dying fire. Her skin still tinged a kiss pink. Lips wet and red from the onslaught of his kisses.

“Rest, spark.” He lulls gently. She just took a demon lover. He’s a lot by mortal standards. She’ll need sleep and plenty of it.

She mourns closing her eyes. Because she knows when she does. This night will be over. Lost to blackness. And she just wants to look at him a little longer. Even a few scant seconds. On the pillow next to hers. Naked in the bed with blue sea like covers draped over his sweaty waist. He’s dewy from love making and his cheeks are flushed too and he simply looks like a god.

Her weak fingers find his arm. Latch on and slumps down. In a rustle of cotton sheets he comes across and gathers her under his arm. Lips dropping to her forehead. Smearing sweat and a delightful little morsel of a kiss.

“I’ll be here when you wake.” He promises. And with that, she’s lost to the consoling vale of sleep.

He watches her drift and remarks how the stars needn’t need gazing at tonight. For he had something far more beautiful to watch over.

~


	41. Triad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this one folks. I don’t mind telling you that a quite serious illness took my house by storm these past few weeks so everything was on hold a while- you’ve been so very patient and I appreciate that 💓💓💓 feast away with the eyes my pretties

Reality came back to her gradually. Slowly it ebbs in like the inching tide. Creeping further and further up onto the shore. The vale of sleep tumbled away. 

She rolls her neck into soft goosedown and cotton. Feels the warm soft sheets cradling all around her. Wrapping her up all snug. 

She feels immaculate here against the sheets. Listening to birdsong perch and chitter at the windows near the side of the bed she’d claimed. The lingering embodiment of lemon and jasmines beating off the cotton reminding her of the lover it so desperately clings too. 

He’s causing a giddy throb low in her stomach of desire and she’s not even peeled her eyes open yet.  Immaculate . 

Even with his dried spend tacky between her legs and a dewy sheen of sweat coating her sleeping body. A delicious burn sits low in her muscles - it feels like it’s drifting into her bones now too - It’s a radiant sort of pain. A well used pain. Lowly burning when she moves, tugging on muscles. A delightful licking burn, ember hot at the root of her bones. 

When she does open her eyes, it is to the sheer beauty of her home. Another golden sunrise stroking along her sight. It fiercely governs the endless blue of the morning sky. Travelling slow and up into prominence. A moderate dust of clouds are fluffed with tips of burnt orange and gold. She can see the mist rolling in calmly from the mountain tops. Soaking the roots of the searing green trees. She thinks back on yesterday’s sunrise. Creamy white roses and hungry kisses from her beautiful demon. 

She’s barely awake and her smile is so wide it hurts, stings, at her warm cheeks. She lets her eyes grow used to the morning outside. The sway of trees on a frigid spring wind, the bedchamber last night was blue as sapphires. This morning it is yellow as yolk and gold, and sunflowers. Filled and poured up full with sun. 

Pine and sunshine and the sparkle of morning dew. Such a fine prospect from this high up. Draegan must have closed the windows sometime in the night. Curtains left wide open. Who would ruin such a fine view with a wall of drapery when the forest is this splendid to look over? 

A cosy warmth leeching across the light linens tells her that the fire has been lit. The space behind her under the blue coverlets is vacant and cooling. She can smell the acrid singe of burning firewood as it crackles, blazes and crumbles away. Infusing the bedchamber with a lovely lulling heat. The tangy dust of soot having been cleaned from the grate. It hangs in the air. Slices through the finery of the scent of jasmine and lemons on the bedding. 

It’s warm and lush in here. Such an infusion of warmth and care and she knows the very fine domineering hand it was crafted by. 

She sighs happily uncurling her arms from the warm snug of the blankets, stretches them above her head. Unawake groans spilling over her lips. It rouses his attention from the adjoining room. 

She twists in the fine sheets. Feeling the sticky join between her legs as she shuffled up in his bed. Pillows rumpled behind her. The calm blue space empty of company. But not for long. 

A slow movement swaying at the bath chamber doorway captures her attention and he slowly comes into her reckoning. Drying his hands on a cloth as he disappeared beyond the doorway for a brief moment. He comes back, hands loose and empty by his side. 

Her belly swoops with bliss to see him again. Hair it’s usual icy sleek and brushed state, laying fine down his naked chest. His red velvet gown lay open at his marble torso. Tied at the waist - at those trim hips that felt too powerful and so good last night. 

A tint of pink kisses her cheeks with the recollection. Her belly doesn’t just swoop this time; it bounces up in her body and bursts fluttery with desire of their joining.

His face is warm and his expression open and knowing. He’s smiling with his entire face. Crinkles by his eyes and the shape of his cheeks enchanted with his happiness. 

She always seems to forget how enchanting; the memory of him fades in comparison to the reality of him when she sees him in the flesh. 

Eyes so searing blue and blazing in the severity of the morning sun. He’s walking to the bed. Wordlessly drapes himself across the mattress, his side, and one glowing-warm hand cupped her neck and spread wide. Drawing her in for a deep searing kiss. 

His lips are perfectly bewitching. His kiss is just the right and gorgeous side of hungry. He tastes like the cool burst of mint and lemons. His hand is butter soft and she can smell the chalky soap and botanical oils pouring off him. 

She tips back with the glorious weight of him. When she draws her arms up to wrap at his shoulders, she feels the covers slip down over her chest. She doesn’t even care that she’s naked and exposing herself to him. Breasts bared as the covers crumple at her waist. His hair skimming her naked skin feels good enough to make her eyes roll back in her head. A great bolt of longing bites into her blood. 

She feels like his kisses always make her bloom. Sparks shimmer in her body. She feels gold and sparkling when he holds her like this. It’s insensible and mad she’s sure; how he makes her feel the way gems gleam in soft twinkling sunshine. 

She moans to him. He tastes her without care of her sour sleepy mouth. He romances her lips awake and makes her nipples graze hard against his chest as he shifts himself between the shape of her legs under the covers. Pillows crushed at her back keeping them piled close on one another. 

His hand slips down her neck to caress the back of her shoulder. The soft space between her legs aches and pulses with its hollowness. Clamouring for attention. Remembering how finely he filled her. Rooted deep inside, so she could feel him behind her belly. 

He breaks the kiss for a moment with a deep groan. His lips smacking wet when freed from hers. “Good Morning.” He counters with a breathy grin. Pecking her again. 

Though her breasts burned, so full, for the feeling of his hand to cup them and tease them- her legs sought to wrap around his hips as he pinned her to the bed again and made her see the stars even though they were nowhere in sight. Tucked away the other side of the world. 

Even with all those things aching for attention, he simply kisses her once more. The desires of her body not blunted at all by more kisses. He pulls up and looks down at her. Nuzzling his elegant sharp nose into the pillow of her cheeks as he hummed a gentle enquiry at her. 

“I take it you slumbered well?” He seeks. She’d slept deep and soundlessly. Barely even shifting from the spot where she’d fallen into after their lovemaking. 

“I think I might be dreaming still.” She smiles back. Making room for him where he’s shifted between her knees. Pinning her below the covers. 

“I assure you spark, you are very,  very much awake.” He promises. Voice dipping low. All heat and rolling honey. Sweet pecking kisses dotted in between his words. Down her cheek and onto the corner of her smile. 

“I took the liberty-“ He explains mystically with a breathy grunt as he pushes himself up and away from the bed. Dropping a kiss at her shoulder before he leaves. Across the room to the side table placed by the warm fire. She pulls the covers with her as she sits up and watches him bring atray back to the bed clutched in both hands. 

She looks across the tray as he sets it before her, also handing her the discarded nightshirt from last evening - full well knowing she was more comfortable clothed. She loops her arms through the sleeves and pushes the rumpled linen down her ribs. Even just being near him in this room and her clothing is already starting to smell like him. Lemons and sweet jasmine. 

She settles her back against her pillows and assesses the bowls swirling with steam before her. There’s porridge, a dish of it, creamy and thick and sprinkled with brown sugar just beginning to melt. A teapot with steam swirling out the spout. Two saucers and cups and a rack full of golden-brown toast. Served with a pot of cherry red jam and a dish of butter. There’s another little silver platter filled with fruits. Segments of peeled oranges, cut apples. Strawberries and cherries. Fat and glistening. 

Draegan settled opposite. He puts a drip or two of milk into the pearly dainty tea cups offered. Then picking up the teapot and pouring it. A perfect splash of amber gold. Iris smiles watching him go about domestic duties. A teapot somehow seems incredulous cradled in his immortal hands. 

He hands her a spoon and his commanding smile wordlessly tells her to eat. She takes the warm bowl of porridge and accepts the spoon off him. Sitting back. He eats some of the fruit. Her eyes chase a drop of dark sweet cherry juice that lingers at the corner of his mouth. So sinful how he’s got her blushing into her porridge. 

She butters and eats her toast and drinks her tea. He has the majority of the fruit. The filling food sets a lovely warmth low in her belly. 

“You do know that there’s a bath waiting for you after you’re done with breakfast.” He tells her, his sharp smile snapping down on a crisp slice of apple. Juice rolling sharp and sugary around his tongue.She takes a sip of tea and smiles when he offers her some of the fruit before he eats it all. 

“Is that so?” She asks. 

“I was drawing it for you as you awoke.” He explains. Hence why he was in the wash chamber and drying his hands when she caught sight of him as she awakened. 

“Might you join me?” Iris asks. Eyes meeting his over the rim of her teacup. His smile reaches his eyes and creases them. Pools of absolute scorching blue.

“I have bathed already. I was up with the sunrise. But I will gladly be there for whatever assistance I may offer.” He pledges with levity. 

“Thank goodness for that. There’s always a spot on my back I can never quite reach.” She plays along. Setting aside the tray now she was finished with the wonderful food. The legs of the tray sink into the covers where she rests it. 

“Well now you have a bath attendant.” Draegan smirks. He nears, and places his hands flat either side of her hips where she’s sitting to get up off the bed. She strikes from the She always wants to touch him. She can’t help it. Her hands are magnets for his pale skin 

“A devilishly good-looking one.” She insists. Stroking her fingers along a creamy cheekbone. Up into the satin bed of his hair. Love rolling under her tongue making her smile like a brain-dead fool. 

“Best put him to use-“ Draegan smiles openly. Iris slips her hands into his offered ones and let’s herself get taken into his beautiful washroom. Very of the age, crackled marble columns, and bright blue paint hanging heavy and lush on the walls. The air dances with candles and the scent from the bath water scattered with demure buttery yellow flowers. 

The side dresser contains all manner of bottles with green herbs and flowers. Some she’d never seen the likes of before. All contained in very ornate jars. Or bundled in dried heaps in small dishes. He was a keen botanist to his bones. She well knew this. Point to any plant or herb and he’d know the medicinal use for it. 

He shuts the door after they enter. His robe sweeps along the floor after his steps. She comes to the bath and her skin pimples in excitement for the kiss of the bath waters heat. She guides off her nightshirt once more, and he assists. 

She feels his fingers linger, knuckles brushing against her lower back. A teasing and gorgeous mouth drops low over her ear. Fruit sweet breath rolls over her naked shoulder. His proximity makes her want to moan in sheer dribbling arousal. 

“Show me this seditious spot you can never quite reach-“ He urges in a delicious whisper. He stretched his long fingers down the dips of her spine. 

Her whole body flutters madly. “Now, I’m not going to make it easy for you-” She smiles. Her head tipping back and finding the muscled expanse of his chest. 

His resulting laugh was the most beautiful sounding thing. 

~

Today was Tuesday. Tuesday was the day for Ravi to be tutored in Art. Iris was the tutor bravely stepping into the fray of such a task. 

The lesson started the same as always; first she had to locate her somewhat errant student. Usually to be found under a shrub in the gardens collecting bugs, or up a tree in the forest. And she would corral him to the best of her abilities, into a parlour where they would each have an easel and a pencil and she’d try and teach him the knack to cross hatching or proportions. 

This is where they found themselves. In a sun drenched parlour on a mildly nice spring day. The fire glowing warm. This parlour was decorated in shades of sweet burnt peach paint splashed evenly on the walls, with white marble decorative plastering of ribbons and drapes as a border. There are golden settees and chairs all dotted around. It had a good selection of Antiques and statues resting on the side tables or on the floors. It’s why she chose it. For Ravi to do some still life studies. It was plenty bright enough thanks to the big windows and airy ceiling. 

Only she often had trouble keeping her dear student to sit still long enough for his pencil to touch the paper-

Apple cake and lemonade had been promised of Ravi managed to complete the ornate urn-like vase of waxy red tulips Iris had set up on the sheet covered pedestal for them both to sit and sketch. She had a feeling she’d be chancing her arm too soon if she gave him a palette of watercolours or some oils. They’d graduate from pencil upwards to other stronger art media. 

They sit with their easels in front of the short marble pillar plinth. Iris had set up a scenery of sorts behind it. She found an ornamental red and cream toile de jouy fabric screen that Jomar almost had an aneurism at when he found her moving it through the castle unaided. He shrilled for a team of footmen to come and help. 

Over this screen she had thrown a heavy scarlet blanket, trimmed with velvet tassels and whirled with gold baroque spreading patterns. She draped it partially in an elegant gathering over the screen, a half of a textured backdrop for the blood bright tulips in their white and gold vase. 

She let the sunlight be their uplifting source. Shafting in greatly from the window and splashing all over the scene she had painstakingly crafted for their lesson. 

She’d had to make a few compromises to get Ravi to be in here; he already had a wedge of the apple cake that she’d promised for the end of the lesson. And that he could keep his hat box full of pet mice in the room as they drew. She acquiesced to these wishes both. 

And here they now sit, in the merry buttery spring sun, in the airy sun room, drawing the drooping tulips in the vase. Ravi sat swinging his legs on his chair; Iris sat hunched over like a true master of the arts. Squinting to get the light and dark shades right. Adjusting her angle and her pencil accordingly. 

She could feel him before he even entered the room. 

A licking brush of awareness along the back of her neck. One that inspires the hair there to raise. Needle right up and a smile creeps it’s way on her lips. 

A blush fathoms its way into her cheeks. Redder than the tulips she was trying to pay attention too. He lingers at the doorway entrance and she feels so flushed full with perception. Heavy and solid in her stomach like too much wine on an empty stomach. Heady and swirling and  god she feels such a senseless fool in love-

Draegan enters the parlour half an hour into their lesson. An imposing presence before his booted feet even cross the huge Doric style doorway. Ravi bolts up, his mouth stuffed full with cake and lips littered with crumbs, he zips straight to the demon to tug him into the parlour by the arm to show him his work. He comes in willingly. 

Iris turns back and catches the corner of a smooth grin as Ravi shows him his easel and his hard labours of the last twenty minutes. She watches him as he crosses the room. Blinding white of his hair, easy smile on his lips. The way sun slips down the satin blue of his coat. Soaks into his skin. She gets a sudden flash of a wicked association of last night. Dragging her nails down his rigid shoulder blades that rolled under her touch. 

She swoons. And she wasn’t the swooning type. The smell of his perfume cascading on into the room as he breezed past. 

She swallowed. And managed to ignore her traitorous ember hot cheeks and looks instead to her canvas. Ravi was eagerly showing him the drawing and Draegan’s eyes appraised the boys fine work. She watched them from the corner of her eyes. 

“You’ll be up on the walls of Somerset House before you know it, my dear.” He fulfilled with promising hope. Stroking Ravi’s shoulder as he smiled and ate more handfuls of his cake. Attending more cross hatching to the blanket part of the still life before them. 

“Will you draw with us?” Ravi asks pleadingly. Swinging his legs still. 

“I will if my favourite student requires it of me.” Draegan smiles down as Ravi cranes his neck back to meet his gaze. He bends at the waist and lowers to Ravi to speak softly by his ear. “You better keep going or your tutor will have my head for my distracting you.” He softly hushes. 

“Luckily, I’m feeling merciful today. No beheadings.” Iris remarks as she strokes her pencil across the paper. 

She turns her head and catches Draegan’s smile as he walked across to her. She bit the inside of her lower lip in elated giddiness as she felt him lean down behind her. Hair feathering against her shoulders so light. His nose and cheek not at all far from hers. Her hand paused where it lay against the cloth of her paper. A great swell of him and his nearness rushed over her. 

“If you’ve come to distract me-“ She warns nicely. A hint of a warning in her voice. But so much joviality. He could hear it poured into her words. 

“How could I dare disrupt my artisté at her work.” He supposes. The way his words roll off his tongue is cunning. The sensation of his hands on the back of her chair sends her spine racing. 

“Liar.” Iris turns her head and whispers at him. 

He plucks a sweet kiss to her hot cheek out of Ravi’s immediate eye-line. Iris likes to think he was concentrating too hard on his studies to notice. Her smile crumpled her cheeks up when she felt his lips on her. 

They hadn’t broached the subject to the boy yet. But Iris has a feeling he’ll pick up on it before long. He was a clever little thing. Sharp as a tack. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s come to his own notions about it all thus far: he was at relative ease with the fact of Draegan and Kylo’s otherworldly natures. He was constantly asking Kylo to ride on his back in wolf-form in the woods. 

The whole world made sense to Ravi; because he hadn’t been taught to think anything different. Iris doubted he ever would. He took everyone and everything in with such fascination and ease, his plucky young senses shone remarkably diplomatic and he’s so embracing in his understanding of things. 

“I shall sit very quietly and watch my geniuses diligently at work.” He tells. Leaning his elbows on the back of her chair. Resuming his full height. Taking up a position on the chaise behind them. Near the table where a tray of refreshment sat a plate of ginger biscuits and lemonade cradled in delicate little glass cups. He steals one for himself. Ravi had eaten most of the biscuits too. Crumbled a couple up for the mice. 

Ravi suddenly let out a large sigh. “Tulips are boring. Might we draw something else-“ He asks his art tutor after ten minutes of silence, sighing, and scribbling. 

Iris peers around her easel. “What’s wrong with tulips?” She enquires. “Yours are coming along brilliantly.” She declares. Looking at his work. 

“They're boring.” Ravi says as if the world in all its might is ending. “Couldn’t we study something else?” 

“I thought we’d better start with something easy. We can move onto life models as soon as we find someone who can tolerate sitting still for a few hours. Or failing that we could try and get one of the dogs to not move for maybe a minute or two.” Iris supposed. She had considered Erland for briefest of moments. But she knew that silly thing wouldn’t yield-

She turned when she heard Draegan’s chuckle shatter through the silence. The sound of him leafing through whatever novel he had sloped his hand. “You are low on creatures to capture of the hounds have made the list.” 

Ravi turned and sat on his knees in the chair. Facing backwards. Struck with an idea. “We could draw you!” He exclaimed excitedly. Bouncing on the chair with excitement. 

“Oh, surely now I can’t be more interesting than a very pretty vase of tulips?” Draegan teases the boy. 

“Please!” Ravi cries. “Miss Iris said I have to learn how to draw anatomy and proportions.” He asked. 

“What if I’m terrible at sitting still?” Draegan added in good natured torment. 

Iris twisted back and laughed as she watched Ravi run right up to him. Practically skidding to his side on the tiled floor. Clamouring and grabbing his arm. Draegan raised his arm and tucked Ravi under it. Smiling as he practically begged and gave the man his best pleading doe-eyed little look. 

“What does Miss Iris have to say to that?” Draegan asks Ravi. But turning his head toward where she sat turned in her seat. 

“I suppose we could skip the tulips if you would like-“ She smiles to Ravi. He beams in response. She laughs at his eagerness. She’s merely pleased he’s showing such a keen aptitude for his art lessons. 

“Show me where to sit, Maestro.” Draegan says as he rises to his full height and lets his little sprig drag him across the room and find him a chair. Shoving the tulip pillar aside so it was only partially in the frame of what they would now be drawing. A very pretty demon. 

They drag a chair across and Ravi happily runs back to put a new leaf of paper in his easel. Draegan settles down. The sunlight framing him perfectly as he arranged his satin tunic around his hips. Crosses his legs and sits back in a repose. Hands folded in his lap. Resting on the knee that draped over the other. 

Iris feels his eyes drift, swimming over her, where she switches out her previous drawing for a blank sheet. Sliding it into the clip and settling down with her pencil poised. 

“I hope I’m to be compensated for my time.” Draegan says in humour. 

“Hush you. The tulips weren’t nearly half as chatty.” Iris supposed with a silly wide grin. Before she turns to Ravi. Draegan’s eyes crease with the force of his growing smile. Blue embers gazing at her. 

Her and Ravi move their easels closer. Just a mere foot away from where their stunning life model sits so patiently. A life model required a closer look. 

“Remember what I taught you about drawing guide lines to help capture the frame of the human face.” Iris says. 

The boy kneels on his seat and leans over to watch how she begins to sketch quick lines across the page. One for the eyes. One for the lips. A vertical one down the middle for the nose. 

Iris glanced up and locked eyes with her very handsome model. She studied the details of his face that she’s coming to know better than the back of her hand. The creamy skin. The eyes bluer than any ocean or shade of sky put on this earth. The striking dark of his shaped brows when the rest of his colouring is so pale. Perhaps she gets a tad too lost in her gazing for a moment-

The slight tip of his smile tells her he knows that he’s being so vigorously studied. She can’t help the inevitable rush of longing brought on by their night together. Sinful images of them writhing in bed- lounging, kissing, naked- ember hot skin on skin. 

She recalls with a blush swirling at the base of her throat how he felt above her, draped over her naked. Moving his cock inside her, spearing the breath right out her lungs, as her body dragged him deeper. Fisted bed-sheets, silver stars and pleasure heady enough to make her head swim as their hips slapped together in the dark. Weightless and boundless and bliss painted on their sweaty skin. Stunning kisses and muggy skin under sweating palms. 

She blinks and refocuses on her drawing. Setting it out her mind as she scans the heavenly proportions of his face. The soft carve of his mouth. Such a lush promising mouth. She’d no idea a man could have a mouth as pretty as his. Everything about him had to be just ruinous in its allure. Even the way he sits so calmly to be drawn. Taking his time to rake his eyes slowly over Iris as she works. 

She peers over again and his smile slowly creeps up on one side. He was privy to the reason why she was blushing in admiring him. Last nights events lay between them here like a bridge of spiders silk. Flexing and stretching. It’s so obvious and the bond of it keeps drawing attention back to the very memorable and beautiful secret of a night well spent in each other’s arms. 

“Keep still-“ She chides to him when she catches onto his deadly smirk. 

“I haven’t moved a muscle.” Draegan pointed out casually. Passion echoed in each other’s eyes. 

“Have you ever been drawn before?” Ravi piped up curiously. 

“I’ve sat for many a portrait in my time.” He tells the boy. 

“Though I’m relieved this is such an informal setting. Time was before this I’d have to be wearing armour or posed in a uncomfortable manner holding aloft a very heavy sword of some sort.” He tells to Ravi without turning his head. Only flickering his eyes across to the boy. His body remained turned towards Iris. Brilliantly glowing in the naked sunshine. 

“Did Kylo ever sit for portraits?” Ravi added in wonderment. 

Iris couldn’t help the smirk that spread across her face. For she already knew the answer to that. 

Dragean’s smile was similarly as amused. “Only when forced. He really can’t sit still for too long. He’s not capable. He’s sat for paintings many times. Whether or not he gave the artist ample time to complete it is another matter. The last one I heard of threw a tantrum and quit on the spot when he wouldn’t stop fidgeting, and scowling.” He tells. Ravi laughs heartily. 

Iris smiles to her canvas. That sounded like her husband. 

She chuckles to herself as she sketched and shaded the shape of Draegan’s sharp jaw. Not noticing how his eyes crinkled up at the corners and his smile definitely didn’t stay still when he saw her amused at the intimation of Kylo. She could just see him growling hells daggers at the person who begged him to keep his composure. 

“Kylo’s never a one to keep his equanimity when forced.” Iris surmised. “The four meagre days we spent at sea, travelling here from England, was torture enough for him I believe.” 

“If ever there was a man meant to have acres of forest and space and nature at his disposal...” Draegan trailed off. 

“It would be Kylo-“ Iris finished for him. Ravi watched them talk back and forth. A clever glint in his brown eyes. Little cunning smile on his face. One that made him look extraordinarily like his father. 

He suddenly decided to slip off his chair and seek Iris’s permission to excuse himself from art tutoring for a couple of moments. She allows it. And he skips off out the room in far too mischievous a manner. Shouts over his shoulder down the hallway to watch after the mice. 

“I’ve never felt more enthralling in all my life.” Draegan commented drily as the little sprig slipped away to do god only knows what. Trouble most likely. Or to fetch more cake. Who knows-

Leaving the two of them alone, the air in the room rotated and shifted on its axis. A once innocent art lesson turned quite sordid now it was just them two- Iris feels how, somehow, a great deal of heat and stifling air slides on into the room. 

She can’t ignore that  look any longer. 

“Stop that.” She blushes. Breathy. He’s making her breathless like a silly schoolgirl with a stupid crush. 

“I’m not doing a thing.” Draegan teases. Frowning intently. His foot playfully taps on the air. His smile is melting, and his eyes are gorgeous. 

“I beg to differ. You are doing something.” She pointed out. 

“Merely doing as I’m told. Sitting right here.” He smiles. All cunning and slithery smile. The way he purrs his words; she can quite see precisely how far from angelic he could be. 

“Innocence doesn’t become you one bit, Verros.” Iris promises him with weight in her words. 

“You always resort to my last name when you’re getting flustered with me.” He spots. 

Iris shakes her head as she smiles at her drawing. Smiling with her finger to soften the line. Capturing the shaded corner of those impressive blue eyes. 

“And to think I expected exemplary behaviour from such a demonic source.” She sighed. Laying careful attention to the underside of his neck. Brushing away specs of things from her page. 

He’s quiet for a beat and she can tell he’s not stopped smiling. 

“I do so love watching you concentrate.” Draegan hushed softly. “That crinkle in your brow when you focus.” 

Iris can feel the giddy blush bubbling at her skin. Threatening to creep up over her cheeks. She holds it back as long as she can. 

“The first morning I was at Ranlor when I walked into the Orangery, you were sat there, so serenely, making that very focused face down at your sketch of the fountain. Your brows drawn and that wilful pursing of your lips. Graphite smudged on your brow.” He teases with a mirthful smile. 

She wants to be embarrassed that he’d noticed she had pencil dirt smudged on her face. 

“You always did have that. That little possession of perseverance about you. Completely unwilling to abandon something once you’d made a start on it. Even if it vexed you.” 

She edges away a small blemish with the pumice. “You remember that morning. In the orangery.” Iris remarks with a soft smile. So much had passed between them since that innocent moment. She was occupied with drawing as he spoke. But she meets his eyes when he stops. 

“I remember everything, spark.” He promises softly. 

“That’s something you first noticed about me? My perseverance?” She seeks. She wouldn’t have thought it was such an obvious feature. 

“You’re still sat here sketching me even though I’m being damnably distracting to the best of my abilities.” 

“Finally he admits to it.” She smirks under her breath. 

“And, may I state that Kylo is worse. Believe me.” She begins. This makes Draegan chuckle. This he well knows. 

“He’d be over here with his lips on my neck if attention is what he wanted.” She supposed. 

“Vampires have such carnal limitations of patience. I’m wily. I can wait.” Draegan promises. The way he pledges it makes her knees buckle. His eyes alive with the playful promiscuity of it. 

“The tulips were, by far, more cooperative. And much less trouble.” Iris smiles as she sketched a long line down to follow the path of his hair where it lay down his shoulders. Clasping against his chest and his neck. She began putting more shading into his shoulders. The outer slopes of his arms and his torso. 

“But nowhere near as interesting-“ She concedes when she comes to attempt some shading of his coat. 

“Restoring my fragile ego, spark. I thank you.” He accepts. 

“So. Kylo has sat for portraits. I can’t quite believe my ears on the subject...” She seeks. Who better to ask than the man whose loved and known him for so long. 

“He had to be throughly bribed.” He began. This draws a fond smile from the both of them. 

“Does he still have the painting?” Iris asks. 

“It depicted the both of us. Donning battle armour. It hangs somewhere on these castle walls. It was hidden away for quite some time I believe.” 

She knows what that meant. 

“Like the portrait in the attic turret-“ Iris supposed. The one she’d seen that was scratched and carved to shreds. Tossed aside like it was nothing. 

Draegan nods. Closing his eyes for only a second as he nodded. “Like the very same.” 

Iris nervously worried the inside of her lower lip with her teeth. She knew how long Kylo had kept his possessions of him locked away and covered.

“I should love to see it it. Perhaps I’ll go on a quest for it at some point.” She wanted to see both her loves captured in the flawless clarity of oils. She didn’t doubt they looked the same as they did now. But how times have aged them on on different ways as lovers. Apart and together. 

“I’ll ask your Lord for the whereabouts of the painting upon his return.” Draegan insists. 

“I’d hedge your bets and ask Jomar. Seems a safer option that he’ll know.” Iris predicts.

“True.” Draegan supposed. Kylo was not a one for keeping on top of things. That was Jomar’s job, as the man frequently pointed out. Constantly demanding a raisein pay for his worthwhile efforts. 

“How is the artwork progressing?” Draegan seeks. 

“You cut a charming figure. It’s very pleasing to the artistic eye.” She informs. 

“Well that is a relief.” He expresses huskily. 

Iris puts her pencil down on the small table slanted close to her easel where her other implements lay on a canvas sheet. She dusts off her hands. “I need a respite. If Ravi can excuse himself for cake then I can too.” She allows. 

Draegan nods in his direction. Urging her over. 

“I’d caution you against moving. However will I complete my drawing if you don’t stay still?” She despairs as she wanders close and gets unwillingly snatched up into his lap. 

“Maybe I can’t be so far removed from your touch for a minute longer?” Draegan insists as he leans up and cups the back of her head to lay a kiss on her lips. Her whole lower body curls and melts into him. Pliant. 

He takes advantage of that; manoeuvres her skilfully right off the floor and onto his lap. Her feet almost flew right out her dainty slippers, as he draped her over his stocky lean thighs. She smiles to his embrace. Her hands snaking to find their way about his shoulders. 

“Artists aren’t supposed to kiss their life models.” She smiles breathily when they pull apart. 

That makes him kiss her all the harder- she whines into his mouth when his tongue slips past her lips and does something clever and breath stealing. One hand slips up her waist. Cups a hip. Holds her back. She sinks to him. Unable to resist. Fingers pinching into the fabric of his collar. She can’t believe how aroused he’s making her feel- even under her skirts she can feel the strong tenseness of his thighs and it’s doing too many things to her wicked pattern of thoughts. 

They break the kiss with a desperate groan. Breath drying lips when they lever apart only a tiny amount. Heavy lidded eyes looking at kiss swollen mouths. 

“Oh  god -“ Iris groans as she runs the backs of her fingers along his cheekbone and into the savage silk line of his hair. 

“A phrase I hear so often and yet-“ He tilts his head wickedly and ducks to kiss at the humming pulse of her neck. 

“Ravi will be back any minute.” She supposed as she cups the back of his head where he leaned in to lay a kiss at her skin. Dragging her fingers, swimming love drunk fingertips, through white silk. 

“He might be able to spot that we’ve moved.” Draegan sighs. Cleverly smiling as he nuzzles under her jaw. Humming dearly at the trace of soap he watched and helped rub all over her skin in her bathing this morning. He’d wanted to swallow her up in his hold and bundle her right back into bed helping her get dried off afterwards. 

“Pray whatever path of mischief he’s on takes it’s time with him-“ Iris surmises. Plucking a sweet gently kiss against his mouth. He smiles when she pulls back. “Is that wicked?” She asks. 

“I think you forget my nature. I invented wicked.” He drawled. His hand slipping up her leg to cup her hip. Fingertips sliding along the crease of her thigh in her dress. Skipping along the pretty soft printed cotton of her dress. White layered with blue pinstripes of flowers. 

She sinks into yet another melting kiss he was only too happy to delight her with. He kisses her like she’s a divine revelation. Slow, steady and sure. His lips so firmly tentative and warm. Fingers capturing the shape at the hinge of her jaw. His touch starved self soaks up every second of these kisses. 

Iris is merely trying desperately to stay in her own head. Mewling soft noises. She knows the span of his hands so intimately now. But the size of them in reminders is still dizzying to her. She feels sunshine hot on her back, burning her closed eyelids, and pushing through the press of her dress. Yet underneath and all around is Draegan and his plentiful kisses to make her insensible. 

She really does make an effort to draw back before they get caught by the little sprig wandering back in with cake stuffed in his mouth. 

She tried to remedy the situation; she fusses with his hair. Combs it straight with her fingers. The neat smooth of it that looks more than a little out of place. She can however, do very little to rectify the kiss bruised state of his lips. Nothing she can do for those, save for admiring them. 

He sits there. Very amused that she’s doing her best to smooth over his ruffled appearance. He doesn’t mind: he’ll proudly wear the affects of her touch. 

He helps slant his knees so she’s touching the floor. Able to get up and grasp her slippers. Her stockinged feet slid across the tiles as she moves to fetch them. His hand itches to wander the shape of her hips as she bends down to retrieve them. 

Everything about her attracted his touch. His hands, his lips. He wants to haul his arms around her waist and plonk her back down on his thighs and kiss her for the whole rest of the afternoon. 

She bends a knee and slips her dainty footwear back on. Where she knelt over her breasts strained at the pull of her bodice falling forwards. Over valleys and dips he wanted to skate down with his mouth. Let his lips wander over dales and hills of warm sweet secretive places. He reaches for her hand and sits forwards to kiss it before they are interrupted; 

He maintains eye contact as his nose slants against her knuckles. “My turn to have you all at my mercy when the art tutoring is finished.” He winks with a promise up at her. 

She’s seven shades of scarlet to hear that. The way his voice drops into a low purr. It did something that instantly quivers right at her belly. Hot and jolting. 

It appears she was right on their being disturbed; as soon as she stands, the little pitter-patter of childish feet hit in hard clapping succession along the halls and Ravi appears at the doorway again with a plate heaped high with thick golden wedges of cherry studded fruitcake. 

He holds it with both hands and totters across to Iris and Draegan holding up the platter like an offering to the gods. “I brought more cake.” He offered sweetly. Passing it around. 

“Does cook know it’s missing yet?” Iris asks. She steals a cherry from one of the chunks of cake. Ravi’s cheeky smile tells all. Cheeks stuffed and crumbs brushing his chin. He shoved another big wedge of it in his mouth. Cherries and ground almonds and the plate is still warm as heat and brown sugar seeps in oozy delicious scent from the cake. 

“Cake, then sketching. No more distractions.” Iris warns with a stern pointed finger. Ravi nods and skips merrily over to give some more crumbs to the mice. 

She turns and catches Draegans eye. Who gives her a salacious smile as she had explicitly asked for no more interruptions. That didn’t mean he would listen to her about not providing any.

They settle down again, all positions resumed. After Ravi and the mice have had more cake and Iris has virtually had to tie him down onto his chair and ignore Draegans velvet lustful smirks aimed her way. 

The next distraction, as it turns out, is a very happy and welcome one. One that had been well missed by all; except possibly Jomar. 

Iris heard it first. Her ears plucked the sound off the horizon. From in-between the creasing of the wind in the trees she hears it as she was sketching Draegans knees. A low rumble. A churning. The slow beat of hooves and carriage wheels tumbling against the hard spring road in succession. She can hear the horses whinnying at the sight of home. 

Kylo . 

Ravi heard and was off out the door like a shot. Crying kylo’s name in excitement. She looks up to Draegan and catches his eyes. His smile is as great as hers. The carriage.

“Don’t go lingering on my account.” Draegan insists cleverly. 

Iris set down her pencil on the lip of the easel and rose to her feet. She brushed off her dress and zipped for the door. Slippers skidding soft on the tiles. She turns back at the doorway and catches him coming towards her. “I’m coming.” He insists. Hand touching the small of her back. 

They wind through the merry sun filled and shadow pasted castle hallways. Up through the ballroom, down the grand staircase. Coming out to the courtyard where the coach was just springing and lurching on its frame to a stop. 

Erland kicked up a fuss as soon as Iris came into view. Ravi was ten steps ahead of them. He ran to the horse and offered them both morsels of cake, held out flat in his palms. It’s greatly received by Erland and the horse beside him. 

The coach door was creaked open, pushed far back, and Iris finds herself completely grinning as she steps quickly down the steps. Holding up her skirts and almost sprinting across the tiles. Slippers skimming across the stone as she makes her way to her husbands arms. 

She hears a rumbling growl and his deep voice emerges as his boots do, out the carriage. Half his coated arm comes out as he climbs down. His body stiff and jolted from the rough terrain they’d bumped and ridden over. 

“ Jomar!  Where the bloody hell did you put my gloves? I couldn’t find the damn things and I hope you know I hold you entirely responsible.” Comes Kylo’s shouts to their Butler. Who is currently stood at the doorway Iris and Draegan just walked through, rolling his eyes and sighing at the prospect of his reign of peace now being officially, sadly, over. 

Iris hurried across the courtyard with no shame. Right into her husbands arms as he creaked out the coach, stood to stretch out his cramped up muscles. Rubbing one palm over his lower back and loosening out the tightness in his spine. He’s really not a man that could be boxed into anything. 

He can’t be pressed into small spaces and made to stay. He’s energetic and wild and his very nature hinges on the fact that he needs acres around him to feel some sort of sane. 

When he turns and catches sight of his wife hurrying towards him, a crooked grin slides onto his mouth. 

He steps to her and catches her in a wrapping hug, whirling her around as she came to welcome him home. A laugh, throaty and rolling, squeezes out his lips as he catches her. Crushing the air entirely out of her in his hold. Each of her ribs squeeze and thick sweet air shudders out her. She doesn’t need it anymore. She has him back. This damn great sycamore towering tree of her man. 

“I take it I was missed.” He comments cheekily. As Iris practically had thrown herself into his chest. He plucks a kiss onto the cushion of her hair. Nose slanting into her cheek as he held her up. Her arms anchored hard around his neck. His hands circled around her waist. Spanning it entirely with his big mitts. 

“Why, had you been somewhere?” Jomar calls out. Sarcasm dripping from his voice even from across the courtyard. His sharp butterscotch eyes clever with fierce mirth. 

Kylo’s resoundinggrumpy growl slithers and knocks off the high courtyard walls around them. 

He sinks back into the hug: loves the weight of her in his arms. The warm cotton of her dress and the beating pulse of her heart ringing in his ears once more. Her pear perfume ripe and vibrant in his nose.  Home again is the wearied traveler. 

“We missed you.” Iris tells him in a loving hush. Cupping his ears in his long hair. Stroking his hair with her hand and clinging onto his coat as if he were marching off to war come the dawn. She sinks her face into his neck and all the things that composed him makes her heart thump wild. New rich wool from his coat, that dark fruity tumbling brambles cologne, and the coolness of his skin. 

Draegan comes to a slow stop behind her. Lingering on the courtyard steps. Smiling at his Viking’s welcome home. 

“I missed you too, Dove.” Kylo tells. Smudging a fierce wet kiss onto her lips as she pulled back to look at him. For a moment his eyes flicker across to Draegan after he kissed her. So he could know the words were meant for him too. 

He sets his wife down and keeps her close. Hands joined, fingers linked and woven together at the back of her hips. Iris is stood in front of him, reaching up on tiptoes to cup his face. Both thumbs rubbing at his shaven cheeks. He’s smiling down at her as her fingers trace the divots caused by his smile. 

“You look older and wiser. Nicely weathered from your journeys. My weary traveler.” Iris insists with humour. Slinking to his side and laying her hand across his firm belly. Feeling the twist of his hips as he walks beside her. 

“Do I look older? More rugged? In a carefree and handsome sort of a way.” He seeks. 

“I was just about to remark on it yes. In fact I think you’re a little taller.” Iris exclaims. Hugging into his side. 

“I hope you know I expect a grand welcome home. Nothing less will serve. A banquet in my honour. Dancing and a tourney. It’s the very least I expect now.”He jokes. 

“Champagne and roast beef for dinner.” Iris is delighted to inform. “Before the jousting takes place.” She jokes back. 

“ Ahh . You know, you’re my favourite wife.” He hushes. Iris smiles at his joke. 

They turn to walk inside. Step by step. Kylo pats Erland’s flank as he walks past the idiot. He’s in desperate need of a brush and wash down after his hard work pulling the coach. His exercise was conducive to his breed. And now he’ll need a good scrub down and his hooves and shoes cleaned, whilst he’s throughly fed and watered. 

Iris had thought she could go inside with her husband but her needy horse had other ideas. He snatched a mouthful of her skirts as she walked past. Effectively halting her where she stood. 

“If you’ve bitten through my skirts Erland, I’ll have to punish you. This dress is but three weeks old.” She announces. He lets go and lowers his head like a sad puppy dog as she twisted her skirts out his way. 

She took pity and let the silly animal have some scratches behind his ears and down his mane. His big ears prick forwards and his lower lip goes all low. He whomps his heavy head on Iris’s shoulder and nearly crumpled her to the floor. 

His eyes roll over white as she fusses the silly beast. Chuffing noises of pleasure, purrs for lack of a better word, tumble from his big chest. Horses don’t purr but that’s the closest thing Erland does when his favourite person on the planet gives him scratches under his chin. 

Kylo carries on walking to come to Draegan’s side. He turns back and smiles a chuckle as they notice how taken Erland was with Iris. 

“That truly is the strangest horse I think I’ve ever come across.” Draegan announces. 

“One way of putting it. He refused to come out his stall this morning unless apples were involved. Ended up eating half a barrels worth in an attempt to coax him out.” Kylo says, rolling his eyes. And when Erland didn’t want to budge. There truly was no moving him for love nor money-

“Welcome home by the way.” Draegan announces to him. Turning his regal head and catching Kylo’s eyes in his dazzling ones. 

Even in being away for such a short period of time, he forgets how captivating those blue eyes of his could be. So diamond-cut sharp they could slice skin if needed. Kylo always thinks he remembers them more vivid than they actually are. But coming back home to the sight of them in their brilliancy only served to prove him wrong; they were still just as savage sharp. 

Kylo smiles at him. A bashful wash of pink on his cheeks. “Missed you too.” He admits. Letting the eye contact between them simmer. Their bodies both burn with the need that they tamp down- for now. It’ll get unleashed later. 

He’s aching to kiss Draegan in a way that really wasn’t proper. Not a tight-lipped and loveless peck. He wants to usher both this man and his woman into a room and give them hard hungry sucking kisses that knocks the breath clean out of them. 

“I’d welcome that.” Draegan whispers to Kylo. As they stand side by side and watch Iris fussing their horse. 

The low octave of his voice makes Kylo’s eyes roll back in his head. His chest puffs on a breath he couldn’t hide. He wants to shove this demon in the nearest shadowy corner and palm at his cock through his trousers. Feel him grow stiff and hard under his hand, as he bites into that sinewy corded -  beautiful \- neck. 

Kylo wets his lips. Rosy pink. “I think dinner will have to be a short affair tonight.” He insists. 

Dragean smirks beside him. 

He was awfully true to his word on the matter of dinner being short; Kylo’s luggage is fetched inside and unpacked. He’s drawn a bath which he sinks into for precisely two minutes. Scrubbing himself up with furious short movements. Minty-pine soap slipping all over his impatient fingers. He cursed when the soap zipped right out his hand on more than one occasion from his too tight grip. He dunks and washes his hair so fast it’s crazy. 

He redressed in such a fast manner. Dismissed Wilton for the evening. He can yank clothes on faster without the finicky man trying to suggest things to him. Breeches- pulled up the wrong way around at first so the falls are at his arse- but he rights them. Stabs his legs furiously into the things and shimmies them up his hips. Wrestles on a shirt and doesn’t even go to the bother of a waistcoat and cravat. He does the collar up as he stalks along the darkly enchanting and half candle lit hallways to go to dinner. 

Iris and Draegan hadn’t bothered changing for dinner either. They’re having some of the proffered and very aged excellent champagne by the fire as they wait on him. Tucked cozily together on one red settee. Lolloping lazy hounds around them on the floor. Warmed by the flames. 

Kylo barks out for “Food.  Now!” As soon as his toes cross the dining room threshold. His boots sound like whip cracks on the tiles. He hears the nervous shuffling steps of his staff attending to his immediate shout, as the quivering footmen brought in dinner. Marched it in, in big domed silver cloches. He can smell it already. Juicy roast beef and all the trimmings to go alongside. Scents of an inviting dinner sneak subtly out from under the domed lids. 

Iris and Draegan share a look of bemusement and slight humour. Kylo’s virtually tucking in by the time they take two meagre steps get to the table. 

They join him and he carves up the beef for them to enjoy. Heaps golden potatoes and green sprouts and big fluffy Yorkshire puddings and shards of carrots on their plates and tells them to eat up quick. Gives his wife a hungry devious look as he chews when she ladles silky thick red wine gravy onto her plate far too slowly. 

She understands what that look means. It means she should make haste. He’s had a criminally long time without a pastime that the both of them throughly enjoy. Hang dinner, he wants to sweep her upstairs and remind her that he’s a creature of such little patience. And it’s wearing thinner and thinner, pathetically flimsy and threadbare, by every second he isn’t sinking his thick cock so gut deep in her tight juicy-slick cunt. That he isn’t seeing her eyes flutter back and her tits jolt with his slamming hips is a vile  vile crime. 

That they aren’t all sweat soaked and slobbering. Incoherent fucked out babble falling from her drooling mouth as he plows her from behind. Holding her head up by her hair to see that arch of her spine as he pounds her silly with his cock. His face dripping shiny wet with her cum where he’d feasted between her legs. 

Kylo virtually inhaled his food. And had the pattern off the plate to boot. He could’ve crunched down the bone china in under a second if it suited him. 

He chucked back his glass of champagne and he’s tearing Iris from her seat before she can even spear her last mouthful and bring it to her lips. He drags her bodily out the dining room. A hand fisted in her skirt and a dirty smile dripping lust sits plainly on his face. 

“You’re coming too. Make  fucking haste.” Kylo threatens lustfully back to Draegan as he threw his napkin down and swallowed the last of his champagne. 

“Right behind you.” He calls out. Entertained by his lovers mood. 

Iris is about ready to faint. Being led along with her wrist swallowed up onto the grip of his hand. 

Judging by the way this slows her gait as she stares open mouthed at her husbands devil-may-care approach to their love life, practically broadcasting it to the whole castle. He grunts in annoyance and twists to haul her up in his arms. Lifts her right out the dining room. She squeaks a little at the sudden ferocity. 

“Too slow.” He gruffs. Stomping along with her cradled to his chest. Her hands against his ribs. 

“Wine and cake outside the bedroom door in five hours. Maybe six.” Kylo demands as he strolls past the servants door that led to the kitchens. Where Jomar is stood. Now ushering in the fleet of footmen to clear away dinner. 

“How lovely.” Comes his dry response. 

Iris is death marched through her home. 

It’s a candle lit and beautiful blur to her tonight. There might be a shower of spring stars in the sky. But she does not get to see them. She’s torn away and up into the dark red bedroom. The maids haven’t even had a chance to come and make the bed yet. It matters not, for they’re all just about to throughly muss it up anyway. Candles burn low on the end dresser and a huge slice of light from the bedchamber door casts severely in on the red darkness. 

Kylo grunts again as he deposits Iris to her feet. In to time at all his hands fly for the fastenings of her dress and his lips fly for her neck. He moans greedy into her skin and sucks the taste of her perfume like he needed it to live. 

“Kylo- wait .” She sighs so happily when he finds that cursed sweet spot under her ear. She moans with it and runs her fingers into his thick silky hair. 

He growls at being told to wait. His jaw clamps down on her skin. “ No . No more waiting. I can’t wait.” He orders. 

He scoops her up and dumps her on the bed in a tangled heap. Hands everywhere. Tugging off her slippers, yanking off her stockings as he shook the ribbon garters loose. 

“But I have something- to tell you. I feel like I should  tell you- “ Her voice rises breathy and pitchy as he loosens her neckline and bites the swell of one tit where they lay squished up in her stays. 

“Speak.” He spits against her collarbone, mouth full of her skin, as his hands root for the laces on the back of her dress. She says a quick silently mournful prayer to heaven when she felt his big fingers rip holes where the laces are, tearing stitching, tearing fabric. This dress was doomed to an ill fate by silly horses and dark vampires. 

He grunts puffing breathes of pleasure as he gets her dress wiggled off her shoulders and hauls it off her body. Her belly swoops when he flips her over and gets at the laces of the stays criss-crossed all down her back. She feels his fingers carve through them like a hot knife through butter. 

“It’s about me and Draegan. And something happened, last night. Between us and I want you to know.” Iris insisted. Her eyes falling shut as he rips the undone stays off her. 

He pushes her chemise up from her hips and runs his tongue hotly along the curve of her spine. Taking bites and mouthfuls of her where he wanted. Taste of her skin kicks his animal into feral. Shoving the thin cotton up over her head for her to get it off. Now. Instantly. Her, naked, was his life defining goal. Now and always. Hankering forever for this-

His hands and lips don’t know where to start. 

He’s finally got her now as she lays prostrate on the bed before him. Hands holding her up, flat to the mushed bedding, as she’s almost on all fours. Half bent over the thing with one foot still planted on the floor. One knee braced up and bent on the bed. It does something he finds carnally delightful to the shape of her round ass. 

Oh he’d die now. 

He’d die all over for her skin. For the sight of her pale body glowing in the half dark like this. Deathly lily white and so sweet. All the little moles and marks sprinkled over her back like a warm summer shower. She’s sweet the way cream stirred into sugar is sweet. Beautiful, sacred feminine, and all things nice. 

Savage paw grips her hip and she’s spun again. Now flat on her back and looking up at this looming monster behind her. His eyes scuttle with so much light reflected off the svelte blackness. Glittering darkly with it. Heavy with his gaze. Hot coals burning full to burst. Fissures of red hot heat cracking at the shadowed surface. 

“What is this thing you so want me to know?” He asks evenly. Hands pressed flat by her hips. He eyes her face, but he almost drools as his gaze zips quickly to her bosom. Her nipples on full display. Tongue aching to sloppy suck those sweet red nubs raw. 

“Me and Draegan made love to each other last night.” She tells him. 

Those fissures of heat are so bright now. A curling smile takes his lips entirely. Dimples form shadow crevices in his cheeks. 

“I’m most glad you did.” He grins. “One, because I know you love each other more than words and it was long overdue. Second? If he fucked you last night. Then that means I get the first turn  this evening.” He strikes. 

He mashed his mouth to hers and lets his hands wander every inch. Cupping and pawing her tits hard and gripping them. Plying her nipples with a pinch so hard it almost felt awful. But then the pleasure ebbs in- it trickled from the tips of her breasts all the way down to her cunt; that vivid sensation. 

His other hand sank between her legs and rudely fast he shoved two fingers deep up her. Thrusting his hand as he sucks her nipples, slurping and lapping loudly, noisy, like a randy boy let loose on his first woman. Pawing at her salaciously in the half dark like they could be caught out at any moment-

“She told you then?” Draegan calms smoothly as he comes onto the bed the other side. It dips with the weight of him as he sits and began to unfasten his collar. 

The sudden darkness of the door being pushed shut barely registered to his writhing couple on the bed. Kylo already had her clothes torn off to tatters. Bent over her and sucking at her tits like a desperate child. Patience nowhere to be found here-

“She did.” Kylo laps a smile against her neck. Before he leans back and reaches for his own clothes. 

“You won’t object if I take her first?” Kylo growls. Eyes gleaming lust down at her. 

She felt like a doe being sized up between two slobbering wolves. It made her quiver with anticipation - she can’t deny it. Her mind is too foggy and her sex is too slick and hungry with need to ignore. 

“No objection whatsoever.” Draegan insists with a clever smirk. “I know you must have missed her.” 

“Desperately.” Kylo growls. His cock throbs again. 

Iris sat up on her elbows watching Kylo disrobe. Having already got his tunic and boots off, Draegan slinks down the bed to her and lays gentle kisses down her neck. Her chest heaves and her head falls backwards to him. Her hand finding his smooth long hair to tangle in. 

Kylo’s grunting again when his furiously hard cock gets brushed with the way his breeches rasp over his thighs when he stands. He kicks off his boots and tears the infernally tight things off. Watching them both half naked on the bed caressing and kissing- should be outlawed for how hard it makes his cock pulse. He felt a great glob of precome leak from his head seeing them bare and together like this. 

He steps back to the bed - newly naked - with a determined look steely black in his eyes. She moans with whatever feral position he has in mind. He uses his hand on her hip to guide her where he wants her. 

His groping hands take her hips and turned her back onto her front. Hauling her to the edge of the bed. How she was before. One leg up. Spine curved gentle in a soft flow. 

He slips his cock into her so urgently. Sinks tight to the damn hilt til he can go no further. Gives her no time as she shaped her cunt around the brutal width of his cock. Blunt head stretching her out wide. So delicious the way he always filled her out. Making her vision melt at the corners with the way his fleshy cock-head hits at blissful places. 

He hisses through his teeth with the way she feels. Standing up and bending her over to take his cock. Pure heat and wet wet wet silk to slide his cock into. Nudging her hips back to nestle just that fraction deeper. She’s drooling on the bedsheets already. 

Draegan is there to mop up the tears that threaten to leak from her eyes. Cupping her face and giving her gently plucking reassuring kisses. 

Iris puts her hands on his chest. Lips on his as she pants in a kiss. He pushes his body so close to hers she can feel his cock too - hard and leaking where it throbs for attention. 

“ God , this cunt.” Kylo tips his head back and starts to moan as he pumps his hips ruthlessly into her. When he needed his wife, he went all out. He’s been away and this is the thing that kept him sane when he returned home. Them, here, sliding his cock into her perfect heat and feeling her shudder and moan around him. He wants to snatch up every moan she makes when his cock stabs into her. 

Draegan looks over Iris’s shoulder and catches his eye; right before he sinks down, holding one side of her face, to give her the sweetest kiss. Humming into it like he’s tasting something so fine- and he is. He licks the tangy drops of champagne off her tongue. 

Watching them kiss is making him harder; he can’t help it. Watching her writhe to Draegan as she’s being fucked forwards by him is enough to send him insane. Her hands on his shoulders and his slipping down her back. 

“Does he feel good spark? Impatient as ever to get you on his cock.” Draegan smirks to her as he cups her face and pulls back. Eyes slicing at Kylo as she groans out her answer. 

“Can you blame me-“ Kylo let’s out a guttural moan that could shake the castle roof tiles when she clenched down on him even more. Sucking him right up. Swallowed up purely in the sensation of her pussy. 

“I don’t blame you one bit. Every part of her is exquisite.” Draegan tells confidently as he lowers his lips to her neck again. Humming in pleasure as he tastes the spot under her jaw. 

“You’re both- uh-  ohhh-incorrigible .” She manages to whine out. Kylo snaps his hips harder. If she could still form such words as those he wasn’t truly taking her hard enough. Her mouth gapes. 

Kylo deems a change of position quite necessary; he yanks a hand under her thigh and shoves them both on the bed. Lays them out so he’s behind her, on his side and she’s facing away from him. His cock still rooted deep. He pulls Draegan close and captured her in the middle of them. 

She’s sandwiched between them. Facing Draegan. Still speared on Kylo’s cock with her sweaty thighs clasped to his. 

The caresses come like second nature. Her hand wandering over their shoulders or into their hair. Her shoulder pinned one arm down but she uses the other as Kylo lifts her thigh and fucks her deep. Sliding in like a dream. Her creamy-juicy cunt so slick and silky with the wet they’ve made. She’s sopping for the both of them like this; the three of them finally falling and fucking in tandem together. 

Kylo’s lips, muggy hot breath, finds her ear and his free hand finds hers to curl around Draegan’s cock where he lays the other side of them. Swollen and flushed. She caressed the long long length. Full veins and hot flesh of him pulsing against her hand. They all sigh when he coaxed her hand to curve and cup around the wet wet soft head of his cock. Making a fist and holding him tight. 

“Cup around the tip like that.” He tells her in a soft whisper. Kylo sneers. 

“Feel how hard he is. That’s all for you-” Kylo hums into her ear. Stretching her thigh up snd letting his hand drift over the slick mess they made, finding her clit and pressing it to her body in tight circles. Her oozing wet slips over his fingers. 

“Stroke his hard cock, Iris.” He moans in her ear. 

Drageans moans set them both alight. The way his eyes close and his mouth drops open. His hand drift lazily to her nipples and he brushes them with the flat of his palm. Where they’re all moving and rutting in tandem, her flesh is being jiggled by the slow rolling of Kylo’s hips pounding her. Shockwaves rippling her body. 

He bites into her neck as Draegan kisses her mouth. Groaning the way she tentatively stroked his cock as Kylo make her weak with his. Pushing heat and pleasure to the deepest parts of her with each plunge and tug of him. 

Kylo can’t go slow tonight. He’s too greedy. She feels too good. She’s pouring out all over him and he can feel his stamina starting to wane. He can feel the bone deep tremble in her thighs making her sail dangerously close to climax. Kylo wets his lips and leans in for her ear. 

“I want him to have you after me. You keep stroking his cock, dove. But I’m going to make you cum, like you deserve to cum. And then he’s going to fuck you deep and hard like I do, and I want to watch  every second of it.” He pants against her neck. Dragean sighs a smile and his agreement stumbled lazily out his mouth. 

“Sweet spark. You deserve to cum so many times. Let us give it to you.” Draegan mumbles against her mouth as she slicks her wrist up and down. Paying close attention to his cockhead- like he showed her he likes. 

Her little hand still wrapped in his, catching onto every way he would coax himself into pleasure under his guidance. What he would do with his hand to make himself climax. 

Sweat slicks between skin and moans gasp and fill the air with the heat they’re making. Rutting and writhing together. Iris’s moans start to rise the loudest. Kylo’s hold on her thigh, pulling her leg up and open turns into an anchor on her body. Pulling and tugging her on and off his cock. Draegan kisses up her neck and after he’s done that, he and Kylo meet in the middle over her jaw to share a sloppy hungry-growl filled kiss. 

His demons clever fingers beside her manage to find her clit. Giving Kylo the main opportunity to fuck her thoroughly to sweet completion. Like he needed. Maybe that would ease out his foul temper; four hands were better than two.

“Kylo.” She sighs high in a warning that he well knows. Sobbing with the way Draegan was touching her clit. She yelps with the sensation. Made her clamp down all that much harder on Kylo’s cock as it pumped in and out of her at a brutal pace. It felt like she’s being split open in the most delicious way. Every erotic spot being played with. She’s a stage ready and posed for their divine touches. 

Kylo so wishes he could see her cunt as he fucked her right now. 

How glossy pink wet she’d be. How wide she’d been spread to take his cock. How her sweet little clit throbs and pulses above his cock as he sinks deep. She was so breath-takingly pretty when being taken hard and rough like this- babbling as he pounded her as she cried his name. 

It’s a visual that serves to drive him into his climax. Her name huffing on his lips as he gives it everything he’s got. Hips slamming. Breath panting. Shaking. Sweating.  Cumming . 

Iris knows it too. She can feel it. The hot burst of him splashing inside her as she quakes and whines his name to heaven and back. Crying out ‘ yeses ’ and ‘ more .’

She squeezes right down on him. More tears leave the corner of her eyes as they screw shut. Wordless cries gasp out her mouth. Draegans fingers still swirling her clit. Last lazy words roll from Kylo’s wet lips. Shes almost in agony. It’s so much. 

“Cum for us, Dove.” Kylo sighs to her ear. Hands slipping over her sweaty skin to find Draegans. The all touch and lose their heads in the pleasure that curls obliterating bliss through two of them- for one would still have to wait. 

She does climax. And it’s almost terrifying in how potent the pleasure is. She feels like she falls off the bed. Weightless and 

Devastating-

He feels her flood around his cock. He smiles with the smug satisfaction. 

“That’s it-  fuck , that’s my girl.” He soothes as they both pet her clit and Kylo works every last drop of himself into her. Hips stuttering and moans squeezing out his desperate throat as he pumps his hips to chase his pleasure. Fucking his creamy spend into her. Every little last damn drop. 

He nudged his nose near her face. Into her cheek. Angling for a kiss. She happily gives. Her slack mouth falls open and his tongue sweeps across her lower lip. He can feel how limp she’s become. Her arm is a deadweight at her side. Her thighs are shivering still. Breath pounding her chest. Draegans slender fingers wandering over her nipples and telling her how well she did as he kisses smiles under her jaw. 

“You take him so well.” He hushed to her. 

Kylo sags back sweaty on the rumpled sweaty bed. Hair shining. Cock softening in the gorgeous pink entrapment of her cunt. His big chest rose and fell and -  dear god \- the noise made when he pulled his hips back to slip out of her. The absolute obscenity of it was enough to make him twitch hard again. It made Draegan bite the inside of his lower lip 

Kylo’s thick fingers are quick to chase the place his cock has just slid out of. He slides two fingers right into her. The squelch of his orgasm flutters around his hand. She’s so full and wet. Bursting and pouring over his hand so much. All the hot creamy mess of her, and him, sticks to his fingers. 

And when she sighs Draegan’s name as he paws her tits and kisses her. Kylo is happy to remove himself and watch them together. He watches with hungry heavy eyes and Dragean can feel them on his skin. Raking along like hot carving knives. 

They kiss, lazy and slow. He pulls back so she can catch her breath. White hair draping free down his back. Eyes half lidded and deep pulling breaths kind of kisses. 

He lets her catch her breath for a moment or two. Just lets her feel the solace of their bodies touching. He runs his palm along her stomach. Drags his fingers through her swollen pink cunt. Feeling how ready she was to take him. Kylo’s spend beginning to leak out on his fingers. 

She pulls back from a mind melting kiss and looks up at him with lidded eyes. “I want you too.” She sighs with such simple need. She felt like if she didn’t feel him sink deep into her soon, she’d be left with this body filling ache for him that would never cease. She’s feel hollowed out. 

He cups her face and kisses her on the mouth. Deep and low. Full of longing. 

“You have me.” He answers her. 

His torso moves so her legs can part to welcome him between them. Because she might have just had her brains pounded out of her by Kylo- but she wants him too; she  needs the both of them. More than air she needs these two- And she won’t stop until their spend is all she can feel smeared and leaking down her thighs. 

He drags his hands slowly up her legs. Feeling her thighs and then onto her round handfuls of hips. He lets her pant into his mouth, her breath smooth and even as he pushes his leaking aching cock into her. So red and swollen desperate where they’d been stroking him. 

As soon as he sinks home to the hilt, a ragged moan falls out his mouth. The same with her. Kylo barely swallowed back his moan; 

Holy hell  they looked better than he ever could have imagined. He has a front row seat to see how she stretched around Draegan’s utterly impressive cock. He slips himself up close to her shoulder and lets his hands wander as he watches them fuck. 

He finally gets to see how good they look; Draegan’s round ass thrusting back and forth as he pumps between her spread thighs. The way she moaned for both of them. Kissing one man filthily, and then tugging the other close to kiss him some more. Taking turns. 

Her hands are spoilt for choice as she caresses them in turn. Draegan grabbing her hips and sliding himself into her deeper makes her moan into where she’s messily kissing Kylo. When he dives for her neck with a smile she can’t help the moan that sails out, eyes falling shut and head tipping back in bliss. Letting the sheer raw feeling of them take over her. 

The long plunge of Draegan moving deeply inside her and Kylo sucking stinging sharp bruises at her neck. Her skin absolutely skipping electric with the sensations they’re causing. Lightning bolts of sparks swimming in her. Through her. Making her head feel light and dizzy. 

Draegan can’t take his eyes off her as he moves. The push and pull of her and how she swallowed up his cock was unbelievable. He’s torn between wanting to pound hard the way Kylo did - or clasp her close and sweetly draw gasps and sighs out of her for hours. 

She answers for him; Kylo whispered something in her ear with a devious smile and she hooks her leg over his hip and tilts the angle of her hips.

“There you go, Dove.” Kylo smirks. Watching with lust-drunk eyes where his partners rosy cock sank over and over into his wife’s perfect pink cunt. Stretching her open and he’s not even fully seated yet. 

“Do you like his thick cock,  Hmm? ” Kylo nuzzles at her ear. “Look how much he loves it. How much he longs to fuck you. He can’t even take his eyes off of you.” He hushes. Slipping his tongue behind her earlobe and playing with it. 

Iris grabs for his hair and gets solidly stuck on the same thing he was so transfixed by, watching Draegan’s body come close to hers as he thrusts, slapping hips and skin. Snapping together in rapture. She can feel the sweat sheening down them. 

He comes low and grinds himself to her. Sliding his arm under her shoulder. No room to pull back. He plugs her full of him, and fucks long and evenly into her.Dragging against every divine spot like he did last night; made her feel his length in places she didn’t know had sensation to feel- 

Kylo grips her sweaty neck, corded under his big hand, and he steals her for a filthy tongues kiss as Draegan watched them before a moan and her clenching because of it, made his eyes roll back in his head. 

Mouth open as he gasps her name. Pure pleasure slithering down his spine and pooling molten hot in his abdomen. Telling him now close he was; he didn’t want to pull back, he wanted to stay inside her til he went soft. Warm his cock in her body all night long. 

His long breaths turn to short puffs. Hers are similar. Rising her hips to ride along with his rhythms. Being savagely kissed by her husband, before Draegan just had to have his turn; leaning in to kiss at that pretty mouth. It was insane, but he swore he could taste the essence of Kylo on her lower lip. 

“Make her cum.” Kylo moans to them both. Draegan’s thighs clench with such a dirty order. “Stuff her full, Draegan.” He adds. Smirking as he sucked on her neck. Toying so much with the idea of all the lovely little vampire bruises that will sit there tomorrow. All scarlet red and violet purple. 

Iris doesn’t need to tell him she’s close; he can feel it. The thrill of it buzzing along her spine and shooting to her belly. Warm pooling and melting and he’s writhing into her so hard he knocks the bed into the wall. 

He can’t grip her hips. He’ll break her. He can snap mortal bone as easily as snapping matchsticks. He grips the mahogany bed frame instead. Hair slapping to his sweaty back as he gives the final few mattress trembling thrusts that makes Iris sob his name and wrap both legs around him as she cums. 

She wails his name and she’s quite sure she doesn’t care if all of Germany hears her. 

Other than that, she is wordless and speechless and out of her mind as she shudders and gushes over Draegan’s cock in a sticky gurgling mess. Him and Kylo mingled creamy down her thighs. She was so hot and dripping with them. 

Kylo sneaks smug little kisses at her clammy neck after they come down from their high. Draegan’s tall body eclipsing hers. Stretching out long on the bed over her as she wraps her legs to his hips and sighs blissful in utter dazed out afterglow. 

Sweat is dripping down both their noses and off their brow, but that doesn’t stop him leaning down on strong arms, flexing, to give her the sweetest kiss. She’s sighing for a god that she doesn’t entirely have all that much faith in. 

“Oh- god.” She pants. Choking on her own voice. Limbs splayed. Draegan goes to pull away and out of her and she hooks her hand to his shoulder. “Stay a moment longer.” She begs. 

A slow lazy grin breaks his lips. She loves beyond measure when he looked like this. Eyes all dozy and dazed. A dulled blue. The faintest tint of pink washing his cheeks and some angelic white smooth hair sticking to his brow and his jaw. She can’t help touching his face again. He slants his cheekbone into the small cradle of her hand. 

Kylo’s hand slips down to her stomach. His big body half behind her. “Dirty girl.” He simpers into her ear as she asked for Draegan to stay inside her. 

She turns her head to look at her husband and he’s right there. She nudges her nose into his delightfully big one. “Should I perhaps go away more often if this is what I return home to?” He japes. Lifting his brows in humour. 

Iris and Draegan both say “ No .” In unison. 

Kylo grumps and Draegan leans forwards to kiss him slowly. Nuzzling their lips together to tease before they kissed. Iris liked watching them rile each other up. Their love was so genuine and heartfelt. But that didn’t stop the little essences of their bickering sneaking in. 

The only set of lit candles on the dresser behind them burns and flickers into dying flames. The tapers sink low into melty pools of wax. 

They untangled themselves from each other and lay on the bed for sleep. Them flanking her in the middle. Draegan makes sure the covers are pulled to her shoulders and Kylo whines for goodnight kisses from each of them. 

A few more lazy tonguing kisses and touches here and there. Kylo turns out to be a salacious letch for more - getting Iris’s hand and bringing it over between his thighs to cup the long hard line of his girthy cock laying against his thigh under the thin covers. She gasps at his stamina. He leans in quick and gives her affronted mouth a kiss. Peppering her face in kisses as Draegan leans on an elbow and smirked watching them be silly together. 

She’s sunk deep in her pillow and he can see her eyelids starting to lose the battle of fighting against her sleep. Huddled under the red covers with Draegan behind her stroking caresses along her upper arm. Up her shoulder and back down again. She’s flat to the bed with the sheets tucked around her spent form. Chest moving up and down, slow and steady. 

“Goodnight Dove.” Kylo whispers to her. Long after the candles fizzle away to smoke and a dark night filled up every corner of the bedchamber - midnight ink sneaks to invade every part of the room. A dull crescent moon takes to the sky out the open drapes. It’s light is icy cool and a white flood. 

He leans over and the covers rustle as he kisses her brow. She doesn’t even stir she’s so out of it. Fucked and blissed out by them. His eyes are so soft as he gazes at her and watched her rest all snug and peaceful. 

He looks up and catches Draegan’s eyes behind her sleeping frame. He gives him a small smile. They cuddle her close on either side and snuggle down for the night. Draegan reaches over and finds Kylo’s hip. 

He talks to him quietly. Lets the quiet soft of the night echo around his words and Kylo can’t help smiling at their simple and brutal potency. 

“I’ve never been so happy.” Draegan smiles in telling him. Eyes glorious and full full blue. All glinting with the moon in the sky. 

He says it like a secret. Only it can’t be; because Kylo feels exactly the same way. 

~


End file.
